Multiple scattering ambisonics: three-dimensional sound field estimation using interacting spheres

TL;DR

This paper introduces multiple scattering ambisonics, a novel method using interacting spherical microphone arrays to expand the accurate sound field reconstruction area, enabling higher spatial audio degrees-of-freedom.

Contribution

It proposes a new approach for 3D sound field recording with interacting arrays, overcoming inter-array interference and expanding sweet-spot size.

Findings

Numerical experiments show expanded sweet-spot size.

Method compatible with existing RSMAs.

Enables higher degrees-of-freedom in spatial audio.

Abstract

Rigid spherical microphone arrays (RSMAs) have been widely used in ambisonics sound field recording. While it is desired to combine the information captured by a grid of densely arranged RSMAs for expanding the area of accurate reconstruction, or sweet-spots, this is not trivial due to inter-array interference. Here we propose multiple scattering ambisonics, a method for three-dimensional ambisonics sound field recording using multiple acoustically interacting RSMAs. Numerical experiments demonstrate the sweet-spot expansion realized by the proposed method. The proposed method can be used with existing RSMAs as building blocks and opens possibilities including higher degrees-of-freedom spatial audio.