Sound Radiation of Musical Instruments in VR Applications

In the present study a new recording method to capture the sound radiation of musical instruments for VR applications is developed. One approach is to record the musical instruments from different angles, which in turn represents a part of the radiation. In order to achieve a steady capture of the sound radiation, different configurations of microphone arrays were used. The microphones were arranged in form of shapes close to a sphere in which the player and the instrument are placed. The sound files that have been recorded by means of this cube array were put in a VR environment (Unity) where each of the newly created sound objects could be aligned to the front corners of an imaginary cube. The results indicate that instruments with a rather simple radiation characteristic more likely yield good perceptual results in the VR environment than instruments with a more complex radiation characteristic. The latter produce mixed results because of possible phase problems and other artifacts.