Vector base amplitude panning

Vector Base Amplitude Panning (VBAP) is a method for positioning virtual sources to arbitrary directions using a setup of multiple loudspeakers. In VBAP the number of loudspeakers can be arbitrary, and they can be positioned in an arbitrary 2-D or 3-D setups. VBAP produces virtual sources that are as sharp as is possible with current loudspeaker configuration and amplitude panning methods, since it uses at one time the minimum number of loudspeakers needed, one, two, or three.

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The following table lists most important papers on VBAP in inverse chronological order. For some publications, the PDF-file and a companion web-page containing sound examples are provided. These can be found in the leftmost column.

Publication Short description V. Pulkki "Compensating displacement of amplitude-panned virtual sources." Audio Engineering Society 22th Int. Conf. on Virtual, Synthetic and Entertainment Audio pp. 186-195. 2002 Espoo, Finland In basic amplitude panning there is a small bias in perceived direction, when the loudspeaker pair or triplet is not symmetrical with the median plane, i.e. is on either side of listener. In this paper, a simple method is presented to compensate the bias. The compensation method is also verified with listening tests. V. Pulkki "Spatial Sound Generation and Perception by Amplitude Panning Techniques" The dissertation of Ville Pulkki, which consists of four JAES-articles and two conference articles. The VBAP theory is developed, and a method to equalize the spatial spreading is presented. Directional quality of amplitude-panned virtual sources is studied using listening tests and modeling of directional hearing mechanisms.