Sweet spot widening for stereophonic sound reproduction

The correction of the degradation of the stereophonic illusion due to off-centre listening is investigated. The main idea here is that the directivity pattern of a loudspeaker array should have a well defined shape such that a good stereo sound reproduction is achieved in a large listening area. Optimal digital filters are designed and applied to individual drivers of linear loudspeaker arrays in order to obtain a directivity pattern of a specific shape. This shape is adapted to the time/intensity trading mechanism of the human auditory system via psychoacoustic experiments within a wide listening area. This application is also referred to as "position independent (PI) stereo".