Enzo De Sena: Interactive Auralization for Virtual and Augmented Reality
Auralization is the process of generating the impression of a sound source in a given space. In virtual reality applications, rendering a convincing auditory experience is key to achieving a high level of immersiveness. Physically accurate models of room acoustics can run in real-time using massively parallel GPUs, but significant limitations in terms of frequency range and room dimensions remain. An alternative is to consider inexact models that render accurately only the most important perceptual cues.
Full abstract:
Auralization is the process of generating the impression of a sound source in a given space. In virtual reality applications, rendering a convincing auditory experience is key to achieving a high level of immersiveness. The same is true for augmented reality, where the virtual elements should be auralized in a manner that is consistent with the acoustics of the actual space surrounding the user.
In virtual and augmented reality applications, the user can freely navigate the environment, thus requiring real-time interactive operation. Physically accurate models of room acoustics can run in real-time using massively parallel GPUs, but significant limitations in terms of frequency range and room dimensions remain. An alternative is to consider inexact models that render accurately only the most important perceptual cues. This type of model will be the focus of the first part of this talk. The second part will be concerned with making the simulated room response audible using sparse loudspeaker arrays (5-8 loudspeakers). In this case too, physically accurate reconstruction can only be obtained with significant limitations, and psychoacoustic effects can be leveraged to relax these limitations.
BIO
Enzo De Sena received the B.Sc. degree in 2007 and M.Sc. degree (cum laude) in 2009 both from the Università degli Studi di Napoli "Federico II" (Italy) in Telecommunications Engineering. From 2007 to 2009 he collaborated with the Network Research Lab at UCLA studying the performance of routing protocols in wireless ad-hoc networks. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in 2013 from King's College London (UK) with a thesis focusing on multichannel audio, room acoustics simulation, and microphone array processing. He served as a teaching fellow in the same university from 2012 until 2013. Enzo is currently a visiting researcher at CCRMA, and in October he will be joining the Department of Electrical Engineering at KU Leuven (Belgium) as a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow.