Efficient Synthesis of Room Acoustics via Scattering Delay Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces an efficient, physically-based reverberation model using scattering delay networks that accurately simulates room acoustics with lower computational cost and flexible parameters.

Contribution

It presents a novel scattering delay network approach that derives all parameters from physical room properties, enabling realistic and efficient acoustic simulation.

Findings

Accurately models first-order reflections

Achieves energy decay rates similar to image method

Requires significantly less computation and memory

Abstract

An acoustic reverberator consisting of a network of delay lines connected via scattering junctions is proposed. All parameters of the reverberator are derived from physical properties of the enclosure it simulates. It allows for simulation of unequal and frequency-dependent wall absorption, as well as directional sources and microphones. The reverberator renders the first-order reflections exactly, while making progressively coarser approximations of higher-order reflections. The rate of energy decay is close to that obtained with the image method (IM) and consistent with the predictions of Sabine and Eyring equations. The time evolution of the normalized echo density, which was previously shown to be correlated with the perceived texture of reverberation, is also close to that of IM. However, its computational complexity is one to two orders of magnitude lower, comparable to the computational complexity of a feedback delay network (FDN), and its memory requirements are negligible.