High Resolution Sound Field Analysis with Directional Room Impulse Responses

Conventional room acoustic investigations are mostly based on spatially sparse sampled measurements of single-channel room impulse responses, measured with omnidirectional microphones. Furthermore, these investigations are usually performed under the assumption of a diffuse sound field with isotropic energy distribution. However, to carry out a more detailed investigation of the acoustic measures of a listening plane a high-resolution sound field analysis, both in terms of spatial resolution and directionality, is required.In this contribution, a directional sound field analysis with high spatial resolution is presented. First, a room acoustic simulation of a lecture hall is performed using the software CATT-Acoustic to generate a set of ambisonic B-format room impulse responses. In a next step, a high-resolution acoustic measurement of this very lecture hall is performed using first-order ambisonic microphone arrays. Besides conventional room acoustic measures, diffuseness and directional measures are calculated using data from both simulation and measurement. By means of these measures, results of simulation and measurement are analysed and compared to each other.