The Virtual Acoustic Room

A room may be used for a wide variety of performances and presentations. Each use places different acoustical requirements on the room. We desire a method of electronically controlling the acoustical properties of a room so that one physical space can accommodate various uses. A virtual acoustic room is a room equipped with speakers, microphones and signal processors that functions as an interactive room simulator. Sounds created in the room are detected by the microphones, processed to simulate a desired acoustical space, and returned to the room via the speakers. In order to ensure stable operation and enable simulation of arbitrary spaces, acoustic feedback from the speakers to the microphones must be canceled. The resulting system is a combination of acoustic feedback cancellation technology and multichannel room reverberation technology. This thesis investigates methods applicable to constructing a virtual acoustic room. Acoustic feedback cancellation using static, finite impulse respons