Spatial Audio for the Mobile User

Abstract: Voice over the Internet Protocol (VoIP) is one of the latest and most successful Internet services. It takes advantage of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) and broadband connections to provide high quality and low cost telephony over the Internet or an intranet. This project exploits features of VoIP to create a communication scenario where various conversations can be held at the same time, and each of these conversations can be located at a virtual location in space. The report includes theoretical analysis of psychoacoustic parameters and their experimental implementation together with the design of a spatial audio module for the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) User Agent “minisip”. Besides the 3D sound environment this project introduces multitasking as an integrative feature for “minisip”, gathering various sound inputs connected by a SIP session to the “minisip” interface, and combining them altogether into a unique output. This later feature is achieved with the use of resampling as a core technology. The effects of traffic increment to and from the user due to the support of multiple streams are also introduced.