Mean-square-error-based secondary source placement in sound field synthesis with prior information on desired field
This work addresses a specific problem in audio engineering for sound field synthesis, offering an incremental improvement over existing methods by extending applicability to more synthesis techniques.
The authors tackled the problem of optimizing loudspeaker placement in sound field synthesis under constraints like limited placement regions and speaker numbers, by proposing a mean-square-error-based method that incorporates statistical properties of desired sound fields. The result showed that their optimized placement achieved higher reproduction accuracy compared to regular placements in numerical experiments.
A method of optimizing secondary source placement in sound field synthesis is proposed. Such an optimization method will be useful when the allowable placement region and available number of loudspeakers are limited. We formulate a mean-square-error-based cost function, incorporating the statistical properties of possible desired sound fields, for general linear-least-squares-based sound field synthesis methods, including pressure matching and (weighted) mode matching, whereas most of the current methods are applicable only to the pressure-matching method. An efficient greedy algorithm for minimizing the proposed cost function is also derived. Numerical experiments indicated that a high reproduction accuracy can be achieved by the placement optimized by the proposed method compared with the empirically used regular placement.