Jens Ahrens on The Psychoacoustics of Synthetic Sound Fields

The Psychoacoustics of Synthetic Sound Fields Abstract: Sound fields that are evoked by electro-acoustic systems can differ substantially from sound fields that arise in nature. This is mainly due to the circumstance that with electro-acoustic systems usually two or more transducers radiate coherent signals simultaneously and therefore create sound fields with complicated physical structures. In this talk, we will summarize the current state of research of the psychoacoustic mechanisms that govern the perception of such synthetic sound fields. We will cover traditional Stereophony as well as methods like Wave Field Synthesis that employ large-scale loudspeaker arrays, and a lot in between. Bio: Jens Ahrens received a PhD from the University of Technology Berlin in the year 2010 with a work on the physical fundamentals of sound field synthesis. From 2011 to 2013 he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Microsoft Research where he worked on various aspects of spatial audio capture and reproduction. Currently, he is dedicating his time to the open-source software project SoundScape Renderer.