Virtual Environment Audio

This research is enhancing the Virtual Audio Server (VAS) which was developed as a framework for the study of problems associated with integrating sound into Synthetic Environments.

VAS is a real-time, distributed sound generation server that supports both sampled and synthetic sound sources. It provides the user with high level abstractions for modeling the sonic environment, requiring little or no knowledge of underlying audio hardware. The following are the salient features of VAS being developed:

• Heterogeneous 3D spatialization methods of sounds (Head-Related Transfer Function (HRTF), Speaker-based panning);
• Multiple listeners;
• Synthesis of arbitrary number of sounds utilizing real-time graceful degradation scheduling methods;
• Actor-based programming interface.

An initial upgrade of VAS is operational in the NRL Grotto and can deliver multiple 3D sound sources to multiple listeners with the appropriate spatialization filtering. This upgrade is using a commercial convolution algorithm developed under a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program .

POC:

James A. Ballas, Principal Investigator

ballas@itd.nrl.navy.mil