On the road to massive-multichannel reverberation

Abstract:
Massive-multichannel sound presentation approaches like Wave Field Synthesis and Higher-Order Ambisonics offer significantly more degrees of freedom for designing the sound field to be synthesized than conventional approaches like Stereophony or Surround Sound. While a significant number of achievements regarding the presentation of the direct sound of virtual sound sources are available, the presentation of reverberation has always been a stepchild. This talk gives an overview over current work on all components of reverberation, i.e. early reflections, late reverberation, and room modes. The talk targets a general audience.

Bio: Jens Ahrens is currently Visiting Scholar at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University. He received a Diploma in Electrical Engineering/Sound Engineering (equivalent to Master of Science) from Graz University of Technology and University of Music and Dramatic Arts Graz, Austria, in 2005 and the Doctoral Degree (Dr.-Ing.) from University of Technology Berlin, Germany, in 2010. From 2006 to 2011, he was member of the Audio Technology Group at Deutsche Telekom Laboratories / TU Berlin where he worked on the topic of sound field synthesis. From 2011 to 2013 he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington, USA. His current primary position is Senior Researcher at the Quality and Usability Lab at University of Technology Berlin, Germany, to which he will return in March 2016.