Generation and analysis of an acoustic radiation pattern database for forty-one musical instruments

Abstract

A database of acoustic radiation patterns was recorded, modeled, and analyzed for 41 modern or authentic orchestral musical instruments. The generation of this database included recordings of each instrument over the entire chromatic tone range in an anechoic chamber using a surrounding spherical microphone array. Acoustic source centering was applied in order to align the acoustic center of the sound source to the physical center of the microphone array. The acoustic radiation pattern is generated in the spherical harmonics domain at each harmonic partial of each played tone. An analysis of the acoustic radiation pattern complexity has been performed in terms of the number of excitation points using the centering algorithm. The database can be used both for studying the radiation of musical instruments itself, as well as for the implementation of radiation patterns in room acoustical simulations and auralization in order to obtain a spatial excitation of the room closer to reality.

Incorporating source directivity in wave-based virtual acoustics: Time-domain models and fitting to measured data

“…IV. Loudspeaker data was chosen for this example in order to avoid the uncertainties that come with interpreting the data from musical instruments or the human voice or the like 10 .…”

“…Spherical harmonic representations of sound source directivity 4 have become increasingly common, particularly since the work of Zotter 5 and are sometimes referred to as Oformat in the Ambisonics community 6,7 . This has allowed for the incorporation of source directivity into virtual acoustics 8,9 , and publicly available databases have been created 10 . Sound source directivity has also been employed in geometric room simulations based on the spherical harmonic representation 11,12 .…”

Architectural Features That Make Music Bloom in Concert Halls

“…The symphony orchestra on stage was simulated with 33 calibrated loudspeakers connected to 24 channels [6]. The orientation of the loudspeakers is was to simulate, as well as possible, the directivities of musical instruments [7,8]. The spatial room impulse response from each of the loudspeaker channels was measured with a G.R.A.S.…”

Evaluating the Influence of Phoneme-Dependent Dynamic Speaker Directivity of Embodied Conversational Agents' Speech

“…The first method is commonly used for technical devices, like loudspeakers and musical instruments [26], and employs an array of microphones surrounding the sound source recording simultaneously. A difference analysis reveals the directional pattern for the given tone or frequency, which is usually formulated as a relative change with respect to the frontal direction in an anechoic environment [21]. The measurement procedure suffers from a limited frequency range, where valid data can be acquired.…”