Dirt Cheap 3D Spatial Audio

Abstract

The advent of affordable sophisticated audio solutions for the home PC market has paved the way for low-cost true three-dimensional spatial audio, which can produce a sound effect from any 3D position source. The home entertainment market has guided the development of audio solutions for PCs through hardware support for stereo and Dolby R Surround Sound versions 4.1, 5.1, and 7.1. However these solutions provide sound panning only in a planar configuration, typically around the user's entertainment room. The drivers for these home-market cards (e.g. Direct Sound) do not have support for non-planar configurations. There are other cards and drivers available that provide true 3D spatial audio, but they are geared for the professional user market and have steep price tags over one thousand dollars. We explain how to use inexpensive consumer-level hardware and free software for Linux to build a true 3D spatial audio system.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Oct 01, 2005
Accession Number
ADA606777

Entities

People

  • Dennis G. Brown
  • Eric A Klein
  • Erik B. Tomlin
  • Greg S. Schmidt

Organizations

  • United States Naval Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Attenuation
  • Audio Files
  • Commodities
  • Computer Programs
  • Computers
  • Consumers
  • Debugging
  • Directional
  • Doppler Effect
  • Environment
  • Frequency
  • Helicopters
  • Human-Machine Interaction
  • Military Research
  • Open Source Software
  • Operating Systems
  • Virtual Reality

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Computer Science/Computer Engineering/Data Science/Digital Signal Processing.
  • Economics
  • Educational Psychology