Measuring the Acoustical Properties of the BBC Maida Vale Recording Studios for Virtual Reality

Abstract

In this paper we present a complete acoustic survey of the British Broadcasting Corporation Maida Vale recording studios. The paper outlines a fast room acoustic measurement framework for capture of spatial impulse response measurements for use in three or six degrees of freedom Virtual Reality rendering. Binaural recordings from a KEMAR dummy head as well as higher order Ambisonic spatial room impulse response measurements taken using a higher order Ambisonic microphone are presented. An acoustic comparison of the studios is discussed, highlighting remarkable similarities across three of the recording spaces despite significant differences in geometry. Finally, a database of the measurements, housing the raw impulse response captures as well as processed spatial room impulse responses is presented.

Combined Web-Based Visualisation of 3D Point Clouds and Acoustic Descriptors: An Interdisciplinary Challenge

“…In conclusion, it should be remembered that the objective of this work is not to produce fine-grain architectural and acoustic diagnoses prior to heavy transformation or rehabilitation projects. Such an objective would require much greater resources, including in the data collection phase, as illustrated by the literature on the subject, for example, in [31]. Our approach is, above all, a frugal one, adapted to the specific socio-economic context of our corpus.…”

Room Impulse Response Dataset of a Recording Studio with Variable Wall Paneling Measured Using a 32-Channel Spherical Microphone Array and a B-Format Microphone Array

“…An exponential sine sweep (ESS) signal of 2 s duration and 20 Hz to 25 kHz frequency range generated at a sampling rate of 48 kHz was used as the excitation signal. We chose an ESS as it is widely used for RIR measurements due to its large dynamic range, excellent signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and ability to reject harmonic distortions and nonlinear effects [13,17,29]. The sweep signal was preceded and followed by 1 s silence periods to avoid time-aliasing problems.…”

“…The obtained results enable the identification of potential acoustic issues in the ANU Recording Studio, providing insights for necessary treatments and aiding in the selection of optimal recording locations. Given the scarcity of recording studio datasets [11,13], especially those with variable environments, the findings from this dataset offer valuable guidance for the design of similar studio settings.…”

“…Typically, a singular microphone or an array of microphones is employed to measure RIRs at spatially distributed receiver positions in a given room. Recently, higher-order ambisonic microphone arrays have been widely used to acquire directional characteristics of the acoustic field [11][12][13].…”

“…These datasets differ in key attributes, like the type, size, and configurations of the room measured, the number and density of source and receiver locations, and the type and configuration of loudspeakers and microphones. Some of the publicly available datasets [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] are compared in Table 1. The OpenAIR database [11] contains impulse response data from more than 50 environments, mostly collected in the Ambisonic B-format.…”