A Beamformer to Play with Wall Reflections The Icosahedral Loudspeaker

The quote from Pierre Boulez, given as an epigraph to this article, inspired French researchers to start developing technology for spherical loudspeaker arrays in the 1990s. The hope was to retain the naturalness of sound sources. Now, a few decades later, one might be able to show that even more ca...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Computer music journal Vol. 41; no. 3; pp. 50 - 68
Main Authors:	Zotter, Franz, Zaunschirm, Markus, Frank, Matthias, Kronlachner, Matthias
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	One Rogers St., Cambridge, MA 02142-1209, USA MIT Press 01-09-2017 The MIT Press MIT Press Journals, The
Subjects:	Acoustics Arrays Beamforming Icosahedral phase Loudspeakers Music Sound Sound sources Spatialization
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	The quote from Pierre Boulez, given as an epigraph to this article, inspired French researchers to start developing technology for spherical loudspeaker arrays in the 1990s. The hope was to retain the naturalness of sound sources. Now, a few decades later, one might be able to show that even more can be done: In electroacoustic music, using the icosahedral loudspeaker array called IKO seems to enable spatial gestures that enrich alien sounds with a tangible acoustic naturalness. After a brief discussion of directivity-based composition in computer music, the first part of the article describes the technical background of the IKO, its usage in a digital audio workstation, and psychoacoustic evidence regarding the auditory objects the IKO produces. The second part deals with acoustic equations of spherical beamforming, how the IKO’s loudspeakers are controlled correspondingly, how we deal with excursion limits, and the resulting beam patterns generated by the IKO.
Bibliography:	Fall, 2017
ISSN:	0148-9267 1531-5169
DOI:	10.1162/comj_a_00429