SHroom: A Python Framework for Ambisonics Room Acoustics Simulation and Binaural Rendering

TL;DR

SHroom is an open-source Python library for Ambisonics room acoustics simulation and binaural rendering, enabling real-time head rotation and efficient multi-source processing with perceptual accuracy.

Contribution

It introduces a novel Python framework that combines Ambisonics simulation, binaural decoding, and real-time head rotation with competitive performance.

Findings

Achieves perceptual transparency with 2.02 dB LSD at low SH order

Provides real-time head rotation processing under 1 ms/frame

Outperforms existing tools like pyroomacoustics in efficiency

Abstract

Spherical Harmonics ROOM), an open-source Python library for room acoustics simulation using Ambisonics, available at https://github.com/Yhonatangayer/shroom and installable via \texttt{pip install pyshroom}. \textbf{shroom} projects image-source contributions onto a Spherical Harmonics (SH) basis, yielding a composable pipeline for binaural decoding, spherical array simulation, and real-time head rotation. Benchmarked against \texttt{pyroomacoustics} with an $N=30$ reference, \textbf{shroom} with Magnitude Least Squares (MagLS) achieves perceptual transparency (2.02~dB Log Spectral Distance (LSD) at $N=5$, within the 1--2~dB Just Noticeable Difference (JND)) while its fixed-once decode amortises over multiple sources ($K=1$-to-$8$: slowdown narrows from $7\times$ to $3.1\times$). For dynamic head rotation, \textbf{shroom} applies a Wigner-D multiply at $<1$~ms/frame, making it the only architecturally viable real-time choice.