Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral gets a ghost orchestra with new 3D audio technology
Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral gets a ghost orchestra thanks to advancements is sound technology. The 3D audio research aims to make it possible for everyone to enjoy an orchestra performing in the capital’s landmark church.
Virtual reality could become even more “real” thanks to scientists working on 3D audio technology. The latest effort is aimed at recreating an orchestral concert within the famous Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.
Scientists used computer models of recordings from a live concert held at the cathedral and detailed room acoustic simulations to produce a novel type of audience experience: a virtual recreation of the live performance using spatial audio and virtual reality.
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Researchers reproduced the recordings using computerised acoustical data and enhanced it with computer-generated virtual navigation 3-D visualisations made with immersive architectural rendering that float the viewer through the complex acoustics of the acclaimed medieval Gothic cathedral. This way, users can enjoy the 19th-century opera “La Vierge”, performed live during the 2012-2013 concert season that celebrated the cathedral’s 850th anniversary.
“3D-audio is the hot topic today in virtual reality (VR) that is currently a very active subject in both academic and industrial research,” said Brian F.G. Katz, lead investigator and CNRS Research Director at the Institute Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, Pierre and Marie Curie University. “With the commercialization of affordable VR systems — the cheapest allowing for VR on smartphones — spatial audio is rapidly immerging from the laboratory.”
But scientists want to take their research even further by personalising audio renderings to each user’s own audio capabilities. And this is important as sight and sound contribute to the way we perceive spaces.
“The importance of multimodal interactions, how visual and auditory cues balance in spatial perception, is key to VR and the sense of immersion, of being ‘in’ the VR world,” Katz explained. “For me, spatial audio is a domain on the boundary of physical acoustics, psychoacoustics, perception and cognition, and digital signal processing.”
After Notre Dame’s ghost orchestra, scientists are now focusing on theatre representations.
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