Joint optimization of loudspeaker placement and radiation patterns for Sound Field Reproduction

A new method is presented for optimizing loudspeaker placement, radiation patterns, and excitations for Sound Field Reproduction (SFR). A power constraint is included which is to help control the sound increase in the regions away from listening volume. For a known primary source, the loudspeaker locations and patterns are jointly optimized by Constrained Matching Pursuit (CMP), and this can be undertaken offline, i.e., before system operation. The excitations of the designed loudspeakers are then determined by conventional Lagrangian optimization. Simulations for free space conditions show that the new method yields a lower reproduction error under a power constraint than other SFR methods.