A preliminary comparative investigation between a diffusion equation model and diffuse reflection algorithms in room-acoustics modeling

A preliminary investigation on the diffusion equation model, which is based on diffuse reflections of sound particles in a scattering medium, has been developed to evaluate its performance in predicting real room sound fields. The implementation of the complete diffusion equation model including air absorption, with a mixed boundary condition, has been done through the use of a finite difference scheme known as forward-time central-space, which performance was validated in a previous work. The stability condition is also developed. This paper focus on comparing prediction with others diffuse reflection prediction models, such as radiosity and diffuse ray-tracing simulations, for a real room configuration with different absorption walls properties. The obtained results are satisfactory, showing that deeper investigations are needed on other acoustical parameters, energetic decay curves, sound propagation curves and several computational features, as also other room environments.