The image direction in 5.1-channel surround sound reproduction is analyzed by means of equations for multichannel sound localization. It is proven that by using pairwise signal mixing, a 5.1-channel system is capable of recreating a stable image in the front directional area. The system is also capable of recreating an image in the rear directional area, and image direction is frequency dependent. However, the image in the lateral directional area is unstable. In particular there is a hole in the image in the area of 54.6~ < 0 < 110~. Therefore the lateral image is very poor. A new signal mixing method is proposed which makes it possible to recreate a 360% image within a reasonable frequency range (up to 800 Hz). Finally, a sound image localization experiment is carried out to prove the theoretical analysis.

Author: Bosun, Xie
Affiliation: South China University of Technology, Applied Physics Department, Guangzhou, P. R. China
JAES Volume 49 Issue 4 pp. 263-274; April 2001
Publication Date: April 1, 2001

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