Improve vertical sweet-spot of 3-D sound system by loudspeaker arrays

Recently, we have proposed a 3-D sound system using horizontal arrange loudspeakers by combine the effect of HRTF and the amplitude panning method. In that system, loudspeakers are set at the height of subject's ear level and its sweet-spot is limited by the height of loudspeakers. When listener's ear level is different with loudspeakers, it will cause difficulty of sound localization or breakdown of sound localization. However, it is difficult to adjust properly both the height of loudspeakers and subject's ear level every time. In this paper, we aimed to improve the robustness of the 3-D sound system using vertical loudspeakers array. As a result of experiments, we verify that the loudspeaker arrays can improve the robustness of the 3-D sound system.