Advanced techniques for measuring spatial sound properties of auditoria: an example

The definition and measurement of sound spatialisation have been strongly enhanced in last years, as nowadays spatialisation is considered quite important during design of auditoria and virtual audio reproduction of sound quality in dedicated listening rooms for 3D reproduction Purposes. Even though international standards like ISO 3382 require measuring some spatial parameters (i.e. LE, LF, IACC), usually only binaural measurements are performed, by means of a dummy head, and rarely 3D impulse responses are measured and utilised for sound reproduction. In this paper, an innovative procedure of measuring spatial sound characteristics is presented. The application of this new technique in virtual 3D sound reconstruction is presented. Furthermore, the Methodology is compared with other techniques of 3D sound reproduction. Moreover, the results of a wide campaign of measurements of spatial parameters among different auditoria all over the world, ranging from Italy to Japan and Australia, and conducted with the novel methodology, are compared with the results of standard binaural and 3D measurements. The possibility to enhance the spatial reproduction of sound quality in real spaces and the comprehensibility of spatial parameters is finally considered and presented in different cases.