Objective-oriented method for uniformation of various directivity representations

TL;DR

This paper introduces an objective-oriented approach and a MATLAB toolbox for standardizing and comparing various directivity representations, facilitating research in sound source and head-related transfer functions.

Contribution

It proposes a class-based method for uniform directivity models and provides a MATLAB toolbox with implementations for spherical and hyperspherical harmonics.

Findings

Standardized comparison of directivity models enabled

MATLAB toolbox demonstrated with spherical and hyperspherical harmonics

Improved reproducibility and development in directivity research

Abstract

Over recent years, numerous attempts were taken to provide efficient methods of directivity representation, either regarding sound sources or head-related transfer functions. Because of the wide variety of programming tools and scripts used by different researchers, the resulting representations are inconvevnient to reproduce and compare with each other, hampering the development of the subject. Within this paper, an objective-oriented method is proposed to deal with this issue. The suggested approach bases on defining classes for different directivity models that share some general properties of directivity functions, allowing for easy comparison between different representations. A basic Matlab toolbox utlizing this method is presented alongside exemplary implementations of directivity models based on spherical and hyperspherical harmonics.