1 Institute of Technical Acoustics, Teaching and Research Area of Medical Acoustics, RWTH Aachen University, Germany.
2 Institute of Technical Acoustics, RWTH Aachen University, Germany.
Trends Hear. 2018 Jan-Dec;22:2331216518800871. doi: 10.1177/2331216518800871.
Theory and implementation of acoustic virtual reality have matured and become a powerful tool for the simulation of entirely controllable virtual acoustic environments. Such virtual acoustic environments are relevant for various types of auditory experiments on subjects with normal hearing, facilitating flexible virtual scene generation and manipulation. When it comes to expanding the investigation group to subjects with hearing loss, choosing a reproduction system which offers a proper integration of hearing aids into the virtual acoustic scene is crucial. Current loudspeaker-based spatial audio reproduction systems rely on different techniques to synthesize a surrounding sound field, providing various possibilities for adaptation and extension to allow applications in the field of hearing aid-related research. Representing one option, the concept and implementation of an extended binaural real-time auralization system is presented here. This system is capable of generating complex virtual acoustic environments, including room acoustic simulations, which are reproduced as combined via loudspeakers and research hearing aids. An objective evaluation covers the investigation of different system components, a simulation benchmark analysis for assessing the processing performance, and end-to-end latency measurements.
声虚拟现实的理论和实现已经成熟，成为完全可控的虚拟声环境模拟的有力工具。这种虚拟声环境与正常听力受试者的各种听觉实验相关，有助于灵活的虚拟场景生成和操作。当将研究对象扩展到听力损失的受试者时，选择一种能够将助听器适当集成到虚拟声场景中的再现系统至关重要。当前基于扬声器的空间音频再现系统依赖于不同的技术来合成环绕声场，为适应和扩展提供了各种可能性，以便在助听器相关研究领域中应用。作为一种选择，本文介绍了一种扩展的双耳实时听觉化系统的概念和实现。该系统能够生成复杂的虚拟声环境，包括房间声学模拟，这些模拟通过扬声器和研究助听器进行组合再现。客观评估涵盖了对不同系统组件的研究、用于评估处理性能的仿真基准分析以及端到端延迟测量。
