Strategies for bass enhancement in Multiactuator Panels for Wave Field Synthesis

In this paper, an extension of the useful bandwidth in the low frequency band is applied to compensate the inherent poor bass response of Multiactuator Panels. These are a special type of flat panel loudspeakers that are commonly used to reproduce spatial audio under the Wave Field Synthesis system. The proposed algorithm combines two strategies: first, a dynamic electrical equalization, applied to additional exciters, which are carefully positioned to excite the lower frequency modes of the panel; second, a psycho-acoustical approach, taking profit of the behavior of human hearing based on the missing fundamental principle. For comparison purposes, the shelving and peak equalizations are also applied to the MAP prototypes developed in this paper. Objective and subjective results show that the combined approach results in an effective extension in the low frequency end of MAP with very low levels of distortion, outperforming conventional equalization methods, with better low frequency behavior, and hence better audio quality perception.