Beamforming with compact spherical loudspeaker arrays by Franz Zotter

Abstract:

The lecture addresses beamforming with compact spherical loudspeaker arrays such as louspeaker cubes and the icosahedral loudspeaker (20 transducers, 3rd order), and what we perceive when shooting beams of sound into the surrounding room. There are several other prototypes built in Graz (loudspeaker cubes), whose measurements are available online for own experimentation. Some of the basics are already in the 2019 book on Ambisonics, and newer developments cover the actually quite simple electroacoustic model, as well as how new mixed-order prototypes work. Their spherical enclosure is cost-efficiently 3D printed, providing affordable rehearsal instruments for electroacoustic music.

Bio:

Franz Zotter's background is acoustics and signal processing. He received his diploma in audio engineering in 2004 (speech enhancement, TU Graz) and was awarded a doctoral degree in 2009 by the University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz, and the Lothar-Cremer medal by the German acoustical society (DEGA) in 2012, with works on spherical arrays for sound radiation analysis and synthesis, and Ambisonics. He works at the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics in Graz and chairs the German Acoustical Society (DEGA) TC on virtual acoustics. Franz Zotter is one of the world leading researchers in spatial audio in general and Ambisonics in particular, having written more than 100 papers in the subject, many of them highly cited.