abstract_en.txt

This thesis investigates the two sound field synthesis methods Wave
Field Synthesis and near-field compensated higher order Ambisonics.
It summarizes their theory and provides a software toolkit for
corresponding numerical simulations. Possible deviations of the
synthesized sound field for real loudspeaker arrays and their perceptual
relevance are discussed. This is done firstly based on theoretical
considerations, and then addressed in several psychoacoustic experiments.
These experiments investigate the spatial and timbral fidelity
and spectro-temporal-artifacts in a systematic way for a large number
of different loudspeaker setups. The experiments are conducted
with the help of dynamic binaural synthesis in order to simulate
loudspeaker setups with an inter-loudspeaker spacing of under 1 cm.
The results show that spatial fidelity can already be achieved with
setups having an inter-loudspeaker spacing of 20 cm, whereas timbral
fidelity is only possible for setups employing a spacing below
1 cm. Spectro-temporal artifacts are relevant only for the synthesis of
focused sources. At the end of the thesis, a binaural auditory model
is presented that is able to predict the spatial fidelity for any given
loudspeaker setup.