Proceedings of the 11th Convention of the
European Acoustics Association
Forum Acusticum / EuroNoise 2025


Málaga, Spain
June 23 - 26, 2025





Session: A16.06 Source directivity: capturing, processing, and evaluating its effects
Date: Tuesday 24 June 2025
Time: 14:40
Title: Sound source directivity estimation via a spherical wave decomposition of the radiated field : application to human voice directivity measurements
Author(s): Matthieu Hartenstein
Paul Luizard
Hélène Moingeon
Cédric Pinhède
Marc Pachebat
Christian Ollivon
François Ollivier
Fabrice Silva
Pages: 4465-4472
DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.61782/fa.2025.0789
PDF: https://dael.euracoustics.org/confs/fa2025/data/articles/000789.pdf
Conference proceedings
Abstract

The experimental evaluation of the directivity of a nonrepeatable sound source necessitates the simultaneous acquisition of signals from microphones distributed on a sphere centered on the source with a high spatial resolution. Placing a high number of microphones at precise, pre-determined positions is a laborious task that is subject to inaccuracies. The Helmholtz Equation Least Squares (HELS) method is an imaging technique originally used in near-field acoustic holography. This method involves decomposing the sound field measured around a source into a basis of functions that solve the Helmholtz equation. Once this decomposition has been identified, any acoustic quantity can be reconstructed around the source. Recent simulated and experimental studies have demonstrated that the HELS method consistently estimates the far-field directivity of a sound source from measurements performed on an arbitrary surface around the source. The present study utilizes a sphere-like array of 3 m-diameter and around 600 MEMS microphones installed in an anechoical room to measure the directivity of a reference sound source. The truncation order of the basis function is chosen based on a cross-validation procedure and on stability considerations. Measurements on human singers are presented and compared to recent findings on human voice directivity.