DAFx17 Tutorial 2: Brian Hamilton - Simulation of Room Acoustics

Presented at the 20th International Conference on Digital Audio Effects (DAFx17)
Tuesday 5th September 2017, Edinburgh
http://dafx17.eca.ed.ac.uk/

Tutorial Abstract:
Simulation of room acoustics has applications in architectural acoustics, audio engineering, video games; also it is gaining importance in virtual reality applications, where realistic 3D sound rendering plays an integral part in creating a sense of immersion within a virtual space. This tutorial will give an overview of room acoustic simulation methods, ranging from traditional approaches based on principles of geometrical and statistical acoustics, to numerical methods that solve the wave equation in three spatial dimensions, including recent developments of finite difference time domain (FDTD) methods resulting from the recently completed five-year NESS project (www.ness-music.eu). Computational costs and practical considerations will be discussed, along with the benefits and limitations of these frameworks. Simulation techniques will be illustrated through animations and sound examples.

Speaker Bio:
Brian Hamilton is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Acoustics and Audio group at the University of Edinburgh. His research focusses on numerical methods for large-scale 3-D room acoustics simulations and spatial audio. He received B.Eng. (Hons) and M.Eng. degrees in Electrical Engineering from McGill University in Montréal, QC, Canada, in 2009 and 2012, respectively, and his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh in 2016.