A Database with Directivities of Musical Instruments

TL;DR

This paper introduces a comprehensive database of musical instrument directivities, including recordings and radiation patterns, formatted for use in acoustic simulation and auralisation, with methods for accurate referencing and spatial upsampling.

Contribution

It provides a new database of instrument directivities with standardized formats and a method for physically correct referencing in acoustic simulations.

Findings

Database includes 41 instruments with detailed directivities.

Directivities are suitable for acoustic simulation and auralisation.

Method for referencing directivities to microphone positions is presented.

Abstract

We present a database of recordings and radiation patterns of individual notes for 41 modern and historical musical instruments, measured with a 32-channel spherical microphone array in anechoic conditions. In addition, directivities averaged in one-third octave bands have been calculated for each instrument, which are suitable for use in acoustic simulation and auralisation. The data are provided in SOFA format. Spatial upsampling of the directivities was performed based on spherical spline interpolation and converted to OpenDAFF and GLL format for use in room acoustic and electro-acoustic simulation software. For this purpose, a method is presented how these directivities can be referenced to a specific microphone position in order to achieve a physically correct auralisation without colouration. The data is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.