Predicting the quality of sound pickup using microphone arrays

This paper addresses the problem of predicting audio quality for speech pickup using a linear microphone array. Computer simulations using the image method are used to show that the low reverberation typical of a small room does not affect speech intelligibility. A linear array steered for spherical waves is shown to produce substantial increases in predicted listener preference. The inability of the array to maintain these increases over all source positions in the room is attributed to the limited range resolution of a delay-and-sum steered linear array