Wave field synthesis based concept car for high-quality automotive sound

There is an increasing demand for spatially accurate high-quality sound reproduction in automotive audio. Although cars are typically multi-listener environments, existing solutions are commonly limited to a sweet spot or a small number of positions. Wave field synthesis (WFS) is a spatial sound reproduction technique that enables superior spatial accuracy over an extended listening area, but requires a large number of loudspeakers and has a very high computational complexity. Integrating a WFS system into a car is therefore a challenging task. This paper describes an implementation of a real-Time WFS system that is fully integrated into the interior of a ridable concept car. This prototype is used to investigate the possibilities of WFS for in-car environments. The sound system is combined with a sophisticated room simulation to enable real-To-life auralization. Besides the possibility to evaluate in-car WFS reproduction, this concept car is a convenient development pl atform to explore a wide range of loudspeaker setups and sound reproduction algorithms. Copyright