Spatial perception in wave field synthesis rendered sound fields: Distance of real and virtual nearby sources

sound field by means of loudspeaker arrays. It is desired to make a copy of the original sound field in order to create a virtual sound field with the same properties. It has been shown that the properties are similar but not congruent, which leads to the question of what the agreements and dif-ferences are with regard to auditory perception. Considera-tions are made to illuminate the case of distance perception of virtual sources, and, in particular, the role of the curvature of the wave front for distance perception. The accompanying practical experiments are presented in a companion paper ([2]). WFS enables the directional localization of stable virtual source positions anywhere in the horizontal plane. This characteristic, as illustrated in Figure 1, creates a real acous-tic perspective, which is based on either constant source directions (in the case of distant sources) or constant source positions within a wide listening area