Real-time sound field effect implementation using block filtering and QFT

Abstract

It is almost impossible to generate the sound field effect in real time with the time-domain linear convolution because of its large multiplication operation requirement. To solve this, three methods are introduced to reduce the number of multiplication operations in this paper. Firstly, the time-domain linear convolution is replaced with the frequency-domain circular convolution. In other words, the linear convolution result can be derived from that of the circular convolution and the convolution process is changed into the multiplication one. This technique reduces the number of multiplication operations remarkably. Secondly, a subframe concept is introduced, i.e., one original frame is divided into several subframes. Then the FFT is executed for each subframe and, as a result, the number of multiplication operations can be reduced. Finally, the QFT(Quick Fourier Transform) is used in stead of the FFT. By combining all the above three methods into our final the SFE generation algorithm, the number of computations are reduced sufficiently and the real-time SFE generation becomes possible with a general PC.