# Auralization

> Mediated Wiki article. Canonical URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/Auralization
> Markdown URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/Auralization.md
> Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auralization
> Source revision: 1346865622
> License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)

Not to be confused with [Audiation](/source/Audiation).

**Auralization** is a procedure designed to model and simulate the experience of acoustic phenomena rendered as a soundfield in a virtualized space. This is useful in configuring the [soundscape](/source/Soundscape) of architectural structures, concert venues, and public spaces, as well as in making coherent sound environments within virtual immersion systems.

## History

The English term auralization was used for the first time by [Kleiner](/source/Kleiner) et al. in an article in the journal of the [AES](/source/Audio_Engineering_Society) en 1991.[1]

The increase of computational power allowed the development of the first acoustic simulation software towards the end of the 1960s.[2]

## Principles

Auralizations are experienced through systems rendering virtual acoustic models made by convolving or mixing acoustic events recorded 'dry' (or in an [anechoic](/source/Anechoic) chamber) projected within a virtual model of an acoustic space, the characteristics of which are determined by means of sampling its [impulse response](/source/Impulse_response) (IR). Once this h(t) has been determined, the simulation of the resulting soundfield s(t) in the target environment is obtained by [convolution](/source/Convolution):

r(t) = h(t) * s(t)

The resulting sound r(t) is heard as it would if emitted in that acoustic space.

## Binaurality

For auralizations to be perceived as realistic, it is critical to emulate the human hearing in terms of position and orientation of the listener's head with respect to the sources of sound. For IR data to be convolved convincingly, the acoustic events are captured using a dummy head where two microphones are positioned on each side of the head to record an emulation of sound arriving at the locations of human ears, or using an [ambisonics](/source/Ambisonics) microphone array and mixed down for binaurality. [Head-related transfer functions](/source/Head-related_transfer_function) (HRTF) datasets can be used to simplify the process insofar as a monaural IR can be measured or simulated, then audio content is convolved with its target acoustic space. In rendering the experience, the transfer function corresponding to the orientation of the head is applied to simulate the corresponding spatial emanation of sound.

## See also

- [Convolution reverb](/source/Convolution_reverb)
- [Reverberation](/source/Reverberation)

## Notes and references

1. Kleiner, Mendel; Dalenbäck, Bengt-Inge; Svensson, Peter (11 November 1993). ["Auralization An Overview"](http://www.mattmontag.com/auralization/media/Auralization%20-%20An%20Overview.pdf). *Journal of the Audio Engineering Society*. **41** (11): 861–875. Retrieved 3 November 2022.

1. M. Vorländer. *Auralization : Fundamentals of Acoustics, Modelling, Simulation, Algorithms and Acoustic Virtual Reality*

---
Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Auralization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auralization) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auralization?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.