The use of 3-D audio in a synthetic environment: an aural renderer for a distributed virtual reality system

The addition of spatially localized sound to an existing graphics oriented synthetic environment (virtual reality system) is investigated. To build 3-D audio systems that are robust, listener-independent, real-time, multi-source, and able to give stable sound localization is beyond the current state-of-the-art. The "auralizer" or "aural renderer" described is built as a test-bed for experimenting with the known techniques for generating sound localization cues based on the geometrical models available in a synthetic 3-D world. The psychoacoustical background of sound localization is introduced, and the design and usage of the Distributed Interactive Virtual Environment (DIVE) auralizer is described. The system's implementation and performance are evaluated