Simulation of wave field synthesis

Wave field synthesis utilizes a large number of loudspeakers to generate a desired wave field. It therefore is necessary to drive each speaker with an independent signal, which requires as many amplifier and soundcard channels as there are loudspeakers. These enormous hardware costs make research and development expensive and time consuming. Additionally, different rooms influence the wave field synthesis arrays in different ways. For this reason, a simulation technique is of advantage that permits the evaluation of the perceived properties of arbitrary wave field synthesis configurations without the need to physically construct them. This paper proposes a simulation system capable to simulate wave field synthesis systems in different rooms based on physical measurements of loudspeakers in each room. It presents this system, which is called virtual wave field synthesis, and discusses possibilities as well as limits of this system based on preliminary listening experiments.