Space 3D

A real-time ray tracing, environment-aware audio spatializer.

Based on F. Richard Moore's classic delay-based spatialization algorithm, Space3D creates precise spatial impressions over speaker arrays of any size or over headphones. It simulates the propagation of sound in arbitrary acoustical environments, where all scene elements--sound sources, listeners, and the objects making up the environment--may be moving continuously. When using a speaker array, Space3D can even move sounds within your physical listening room--closer to you than the speakers are. Space3D achieves this by manipulating both the delay and the amplitude--as well as the frequency response with sophisticated filtering methods--of each ray of sound approaching your ears.

In more technical terms, Space3D simulates dynamically changing paths through the scene, diffraction around occluding objects, interpolation of reflections off of “curved” surfaces, real recorded impulse responses of reflections off materials, directional sound sources, and many other features. All of the above features are frequency-dependent for convincing results.

Space3D is GPU-accelerated through the power of NVIDIA CUDA. Our current implementation can reach the simulation of up to sixth-order reflections on consumer-level hardware, and we are always working to push the limits of the hardware to enable more complex scenes at any given reflection order.