Acoustic sound localisation: visualisations of a 1st order ambisonic microphone array

This paper reports on preliminary design and testing of an acoustic spatial localisation system capable of creating detailed two dimensional noise visualisations (heat-maps). The work has developed alongside a range of 360 Ambisonic audio projects including dynamic binaural synthesis, high-resolution head-tracking systems, loudspeaker arrays for simulation and 360 soundfield processing techniques. The sound localisation system uses a total of twelve audio channels and potentially fills a niche between high-end acoustic cameras and MEMs microphone arrays. It is anticipated this work will develop multisensory display and machine listening solutions for a broad range of research domains. The paper reviews a range of current work and presents a background to Ambisonic processing, a description of the system, an experiment and spatial localisation results.