Objective-oriented method for uniformation of various directivity representations
This work addresses a domain-specific issue for researchers in acoustics and audio processing by providing a tool to standardize directivity representations, though it is incremental as it builds on existing methods without introducing a new paradigm.
The paper tackles the problem of inconsistent directivity representations in sound source and head-related transfer function research by proposing an objective-oriented method that defines classes for different models, enabling easier comparison and reproduction; a basic Matlab toolbox is presented with implementations based on spherical and hyperspherical harmonics.
Over recent years, numerous attempts were taken to provide efficient methods of directivity representation, either regarding sound sources or head-related transfer functions. Because of the wide variety of programming tools and scripts used by different researchers, the resulting representations are inconvevnient to reproduce and compare with each other, hampering the development of the subject. Within this paper, an objective-oriented method is proposed to deal with this issue. The suggested approach bases on defining classes for different directivity models that share some general properties of directivity functions, allowing for easy comparison between different representations. A basic Matlab toolbox utlizing this method is presented alongside exemplary implementations of directivity models based on spherical and hyperspherical harmonics.