Seeing with your ears: Novel acoustics project aims to improve virtual reality, explore ear shape effects on 3-D sound

Seeing with your ears
Screenshot of a visual rendering model of Notre Dame Cathedral, created based on plans, laser scan data and site visits. Credit: Ghost Orchestra Project/LIMSI

Paris' Cathedral of Notre Dame has a ghost orchestra that is always performing, thanks to a sophisticated, multidisciplinary acoustics research project that will be presented during Acoustics '17 Boston, the third joint meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and the European Acoustics Association being held June 25-29, in Boston, Massachusetts.



Combined, the multimodal sound and image footage of the ghost orchestra produce a spectral tour to the sounds of the 19th century opera "La Vierge"—The Virgin—performed live during the 2012-2013 concert season to celebrate the Cathedral's 850th anniversary.

Multimodal virtual reality integration is central to the project's significance, said Brian F.G. Katz, lead investigator and CNRS Research Director at the Institute Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, Pierre and Marie Curie University, in Paris.

"3D-audio is the hot topic today in virtual reality (VR) that is currently a very active subject in both academic and industrial research," Katz said. "With the commercialization of affordable VR systems—the cheapest allowing for VR on smartphones—spatial audio is rapidly immerging from the laboratory."

The next stage in spatial audio is personalized audio rendering that involves being able to adjust the rendering to match one's individual head and ear details.

"The importance of multimodal interactions, how visual and auditory cues balance in spatial perception, is key to VR and the sense of immersion, of being 'in' the VR world," Katz explained.

He envisions many applications emerging from the investigation.






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More information: For more information about the project: groupeaa.limsi.fr/projets:ghostorch
Citation: Seeing with your ears: Novel acoustics project aims to improve virtual reality, explore ear shape effects on 3-D sound (2017, June 25) retrieved 22 May 2019 from https://phys.org/news/2017-06-ears-acoustics-aims-virtual-reality.html

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