Topological Sound Propagation with Reverberation Graphs

Efstathios Stavrakis (1) , Nicolas Tsingos (1) , Paul Calamia (2)

1 REVES - Rendering and virtual environments with sound
2 Architectural Acoustics - Graduate Program in Architectural Acoustics

Reverberation graphs is a novel approach to estimate global soundpressure decay and auralize corresponding reverberation effects in interactive virtual environments. We use a 3D model to represent the geometry of the environment explicitly, and we subdivide it into a series of coupled spaces connected by portals. Off-line geometrical-acoustics techniques are used to precompute transport operators, which encode pressure decay characteristics within each space and between coupling interfaces. At run-time, during an interactive simulation, we traverse the adjacency graph corresponding to the spatial subdivision of the environment. We combine transport operators along different sound propagation routes to estimate the pressure decay envelopes from sources to the listener. Our approach compares well with off-line geometrical techniques, but computes reverberation decay envelopes at interactive rates, ranging from 12 to 100 Hz. We propose a scalable artificial reverberator that uses these decay envelopes to auralize reverberation effects, including room coupling. Our complete system can render as many as 30 simultaneous sources in large dynamic virtual environments.

Domaines: Synthèse d'image et réalité virtuelle [cs.GR]

Efstathios Stavrakis, Nicolas Tsingos, Paul Calamia. Topological Sound Propagation with Reverberation Graphs. Acta Acustica united with Acustica, 2008, 94 (6), pp.921-932. ⟨10.3813/AAA.918109⟩. ⟨inria-00606808⟩