title: Robustness of spatial average equalization: a statistical reverberation model approach.
abstract: Traditionally, multiple listener room equalization is performed to improve sound quality at all listeners, during audio playback, in a multiple listener environment (e.g., movie theaters, automobiles, etc.). A typical way of doing multiple listener equalization is through spatial averaging, where the room responses are averaged spatially between positions and an inverse equalization filter is found from the spatially averaged result. However, the equalization performance, will be affected if there is a mismatch between the position of the microphones (which are used for measuring the room responses for designing the equalization filter) and the actual center of listener head position (during playback). In this paper, we will present results on the effects of microphone-listener mismatch on spatial average equalization performance. The results indicate that, for the analyzed rectangular configuration, the region of effective equalization depends on (i) the distance of a listener from the source, (ii) the amount of mismatch between the responses, and (iii) the frequency of the audio signal. We also present some convergence analysis to interpret the results.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering-Systems, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089-2564, USA. sunil@audyssey.com
authors.forename: Sunil
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bharitkar
authors.forename: Philip
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Hilmes
authors.forename: Chris
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kyriakakis
mesh_terms: D001108:Architecture / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D001307:Auditory Perception; D005583:Fourier Analysis; D006801:Humans; D008144:Loudness Perception; D015233:Models, Statistical; D009949:Orientation; D010898:Pitch Perception; D012931:Social Environment; D013016:Sound; D013018:Sound Spectrography / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*