Properties of Large-scale Sound Field Synthesis

Sound field synthesis has been pursued as a promising approach for spatial audio reproduction for large listening areas. Research is typically performed on small and mid-size systems. An increasing number of systems of cinema size and larger exist, which have shown to exhibit properties that cannot be observed with smaller setups. In particular, practical limitations lead to artifacts whose perceptual saliency increases with array size. Depending on the situation, these artifacts are most prominent in time domain or in frequency domain. In this paper, we review the current state of knowledge on the properties of sound field synthesis using large-size loudspeaker arrays regarding both direct sound and reverberation. 1