Scientific Article

Interpolation of scheduled simulation results for real-time auralization of moving sources

Institute for Hearing Technology and Acoustics, RWTH Aachen University, Kopernikusstraße 5, 52074 Aachen, Germany

^* Corresponding author: philipp.schaefer@akustik.rwth-aachen.de

Received: 17 November 2023
Accepted: 20 December 2023

Abstract

A central part of auralization is the consideration of realistic sound propagation effects. This can be achieved using computationally efficient physics-based simulations based on the principle geometrical acoustics. When considering complex effects, e.g. curved propagation due to atmospheric refraction, those simulations can be computationally demanding. This can become the bottleneck for real-time auralizations, as the run-time exceeds the duration of one audio block even for large block sizes. A solution is to schedule the simulations into a separate thread. However, this leads to an irregular update rate which is lower than the rate of the audio blocks. Consequently, the output signal can contain audible artifacts. This especially holds when considering the Doppler effect for dynamic scenarios with fast moving sources, like aircraft. This paper introduces a method for interpolating, and thereby upsampling, the results of scheduled simulations in an auralization context in order to avoid such artifacts. The method is applied to an aircraft flyover auralization considering curved sound propagation in an inhomogeneous, moving atmosphere. Using this method, it is possible to auralize such scenarios in real time.