Synthesis of virtual motion in 3D auditory space

This paper introduces a novel approach to the synthesis of acoustic waveforms that mimic those present near the eardrums of a listener when a sound source is moving through three-dimensional (3D) space. The approach combines well-known physical and biophysical sound-location cues into a discrete synthesis system. Physical cues include both the dependence of intensity on distance from the sound source and the Doppler effect. Biophysical features include the direction-dependent transfer functions imposed by a listener's head and ears and interaural time differences. This technique requires very little computer-disk storage since it relies on low-dimensional functional models that relate cue values to arbitrary locations in a virtual acoustic space.