Fraunhofer Institute listening room offers 3D sound with Neumann

The space where the SpatialSound Wave technology is developed has been equipped with 30 KH studio monitors 310 A, reinforced with KH subwoofers 805, de Neumann.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Multimedia Technologies (IDMT) de Ilmenau (Germany) has enabled a new listening room for its SpatialSound Wave technology. This facility has been equipped with 30 KH studio monitors 310 A, reinforced with KH subwoofers 805, of Neumann, brand that distributes Magnetron.

SpatialSound Wave technology, developed at the Ilmenau headquarters, offers spectacularly clear localization in almost the entire room. As if it were a real acoustic environment, if the listener moves closer to the sound sources (virtual), levels change naturally.

The main fields of application of SpatialSound Wave are theaters, facilities and planetariums. Your user list includes the Zurich Opera House, the Berlin Opera and the Zeiss Planetarium in Jena.

“The intelligence is in the algorithm that controls the speakers. At first, SpatialSound Wave technology was based on the synthesis of wave fields (WFS) to control the speakers so that, with the superposition of all signals, the sound field is reconstructed. However, In recent years we have included several principles of psychoacoustics. The algorithm was changed so that the sound field reproduction is no longer physically correct, but now the speakers can be separated further”, explains Daniel Beer, doctor in engineering and head of electroacoustics.

In order to find the optimal speakers for the new listening room, Monitor speakers from various manufacturers were compared in a laborious test setup.

“We use classic listening test methods. All speakers were calibrated for the room and levels adjusted with great precision. Next, We developed a testing procedure in which 15 Participants analyzed several parameters, which we then evaluate statistically”, comments Christoph Sladeczek, virtual acoustics manager.

For Daniel Beer, Speaker response uniformity plays a decisive role in the entire project. “Before installing the speakers, We measured each one and were able to confirm that the differences in frequency response were less than 1 dB”.