A Realtime Multichannel Room Simulator

A room simulator has been developed as part of a project involving virtual acoustic environments. The system is similar to auditorium simulators for home use. The simulated reverberant field is rendered using six loudspeakers evenly spaced around the perimeter of a listening area. Listeners are not constrained to any particular orientation, although best results are obtained near the center of the space. The simulation is driven from a simple description of the desired room and the location of the sound source. The system accepts monophonic input sound and renders the simulated reverberant field in realtime. Early echo generation is based on the source image model, which determines a finite impulse response filter per output channel. Diffuse reverberant field generation is accomplished using infinite impulse response reverberators based on nested and cascaded allpass filters. The system is implemented using Motorola 56001 digital signal processors, one per output channel. Presented at the 124th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, New Orleans, November, 1992.