Abstract
The introduction of this book reviews the history and current trends in spatial audio presentation. Starting from the invention of the telephone in the nineteenth century, the properties of Stereophony, Surround Sound, Ambisonics, and audio presentation based on head-related transfer functions are outlined. The concept of sound field synthesis with its best-known representatives Wave Field Synthesis and Near-field Compensated Higher Order Ambisonics is then introduced. The chapter ends with the problem formulation, which constitutes the basis for all subsequent chapters.
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Notes
- 1.
Note that one does not speak of a virtual sound source in the context of Stereophony (Blauert 1997). With virtual sound sources, the source’s sound field is apparent but not the source itself. Though, the sound field created by two loudspeakers is generally very different from that of a real source. It just sounds similar.
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Ahrens, J. (2012). Introduction. In: Analytic Methods of Sound Field Synthesis. T-Labs Series in Telecommunication Services. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25743-8_1
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