English

Towards Maximizing a Perceptual Sweet Spot

Audio and Speech Processing 2022-05-05 v2 Sound Neurons and Cognition

Abstract

The sweet spot can be interpreted as the region where acoustic sources create a spatial auditory illusion. We study the problem of maximizing this sweet spot when reproducing a desired sound wave using an array of loudspeakers. To achieve this, we introduce a theoretical framework for spatial sound perception that can be used to define a sweet spot, and we develop a method that aims to generate a sound wave that directly maximizes the sweet spot defined by a model within this framework. Our method aims to incorporate perceptual principles from the onset and is flexible: while it imposes little to no constraints on the regions of interest, the arrangement of loudspeakers or their radiation pattern, it allows for audio perception models that include state-of-the-art monaural perceptual models. Proof-of-concept experiments show that our method outperforms state-of-the-art methods when comparing them in terms of their localization and coloration properties.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2201.01461,
  title  = {Towards Maximizing a Perceptual Sweet Spot},
  author = {Pedro Izquierdo Lehmann and Rodrigo F. Cadiz and Carlos A. Sing Long},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2201.01461},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

24 pages, 3 figures. Modified the perceptual model to account for binaural effects. Updated the methods and experiments accordingly

R2 v1 2026-06-24T08:40:32.825Z