Official code: ITA10
- Course period: second quarter
- Course year: 1,2
- Course type: elective
- Credits: 2
- Coordinator: Julián Villegas
- Instructor(s): Julián Villegas and Michael Cohen.
The purpose of this course is to study the fundamentals of spatial hearing and its application to virtual environments. By using two ears, human among other species, are able to accurately determine the direction from where a sound is being emitted in a real environment. For virtual environments (e.g., movies, games, recorded or live concerts) is desirable to provide the spatial cues found in nature to increase the realism of the scene. Besides reviewing the underlying theories of spatial hearing, this course focuses in practical implementations of binaural hearing techniques, so the course is intense in hands-on exercises, assignments, and projects mainly based on Pure-data programming language (http://puredata.info).
- Students who approve this course are expected to understand the basic underlying mechanisms of spatial hearing, as well as the literature and terminology on this topic.
- Given some application constraints (real-time, computing power, etc.) students at the end of the term should be able to decide which of the presented techniques is best for creating the 3D aural illusion.
- Upon completion of this course, students should be able to successfully implement virtual 3D sound environments based on head-related transfer functions (HRTF) and multi-speaker systems.
- Spatial hearing and psychoacoustics
- Head-related impulse response and transfer functions
- Distance cues
- Motion cues
- Room cues
- Loudspeaker techniques
- Headphone techniques
- Durand R. Begault, 3-D Sound for Virtual Reality and Multimedia, Academic Press, 2000.
- The Technology of Binaural Listening
- Various materials prepared by the instructors
This class does not have prerequisites, but it is recommended that students be familiarized with Pure-data programming paradigm, and general audio signal processing techniques. These are some classes that students are encouraged to take, i.e.:
- ITC02 Introduction to Sound and Audio
- ITA01 Music Technology
- ITA07 Advanced Signal Processing
Quizzes 40% Assignments 60%
- Course website: http://onkyo.u-aizu.ac.jp/index.php/3d-sound/
- J. Blauert, Spatial Hearing: The Psychophysics of Human Sound Localization. MIT Press, 1997.
- Bregman, Albert S., Auditory Scene Analysis: The Perceptual Organization of sound. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1990 (hardcover)/1994 (paperback).