Simulations (Auditory Virtual Space)

A listener seated at a computer running 3-D auditory virtual-reality hardware and software (Tucker-Davis Technology Power DAC). The sounds presented over headphones appear as they would in a real-world setting.

Auditory virtual space means the ability to experience a real world auditory environment through simulations presented over loudspeakers or headphones. For instance, being able to experience listening to a concert at Orchestra Hall while sitting in your living room or an air show while lying in bed. Such an ability to provide this form of experience has obvious applications in the audio entertainment and movie industry, but it is also may provide a powerful means of designing new hearing aids and for providing other means of transmitting information from one place or person to other places or people. At the Parmly Hearing Institute we have a laboratory devoted to using a virtual auditory computer simulation to study sound localization, especially the role that reflections of sound and head movements play in our everyday ability to accurately locate and process sound. Both the computer simulations and the listening environment developed at Parmly allow us to vary many aspects of a real world acoustic environment in order to better understand sound processing. The basic system, based on a Tucker Davis Technology Power Dac and a Polemus Fast Track head monitor, enables us to present sounds over headphones (or to loudspeakers) in such a way that most listeners perceive the sounds as if they were occurring in a real-world space. The system allows us to control many variables like the interaction between head movements and a sound's location or the location and the number of echoes of a sound. Our long-term aim is to use this system to better understand how we locate and process sounds in the real world, especially when there are many sounds present.