User-specific Audio Rendering and Steerable Sound for Distributed Virtual Environments

We present a method for user-specific audio rendering of a vir-tual environment that is shared by multiple participants. The tech-nique differs from methods such as amplitude differencing, HRTF filtering, and wave field synthesis. Instead we model virtual mi-crophones within the 3-D scene, each of which captures audio to be rendered to a loudspeaker. Spatialization of sound sources is accomplished via acoustic physical modelling, yet our approach also allows for localized signal processing within the scene. In or-der to control the flow of sound within the scene, the user has the ability to steer audio in specific directions. This paradigm leads to many novel applications where groups of individuals can share one continuous interactive sonic space. [Keywords: multi-user, spatialization, 3-D arrangement of DSP, steerable audio] 1