Microphone Techniques and Directional Quality of Sound Reproduction

Different spatial sound reproduction techniques are evaluated using a binaural auditory model. Ear canal signals for different microphone techniques and different loudspeaker reproduction are simulated. Directional auditory cues are calculated and directional quality is discussed. The results of recording techniques for stereophonic listening explain the subjective opinions presented in literature: With coincident microphone techniques directionally fairly stable and consistent virtual sources can be produced, and with spaced microphones more spread and ambiguous virtual sources are achieved. In multichannel reproduction, none of the existing microphone techniques are found to produce good directional quality. Both coincident and spaced microphone techniques produce spread virtual sources. 1