ESMA-3D Immersive Soundscape Recording Samples

Posted on 23 Jan 2023 by Hyunkook Lee

Capturing and reproducing soundscape to study the human perception of environments

Sounds we hear in our daily life have a significant impact on the quality of life and wellbeing. One of my ongoing research projects is spatial capture and analysis of urban and nature soundscape. For obtaining ecologically valid results in lab studies about soundscape quality or for providing a realistic and immersive experience in creative applications like film, music, sound design, etc, recording techniques that can provide accurate and plausible simulation of soundscape are of paramount importance.

We’ve been capturing soundscapes in various cities and places over the past few years, using the ESMA-3D mic array I developed for 360° outdoor recording. We are now sharing some of these recording samples on Samply, a lossless (48kHz/24bits flac) audio streaming platform. They have been “binauralised” for headphone listening using the our new plugin Virtuoso. Put on a pair of headphones and transport yourself into a beach on North Wales, various places in Manchester, New York City and a tranquil lakeside with some loud ducks in Newmillerdam.

This playlist will keep being updated with new recordings.

We are planning to use these recordings for conducting studies into how the spatiality of soundscape as well as other psychoacoustic factors influence the perception of soundscape quality in urban environments, in collaboration with a world-renowned soundscape researcher Prof Jian Kang of UCL.

This project is supported by Schoeps Mikrofone and Rycote Microphone Windshields Ltd

To find out more about the ESMA-3D technique, please visit the links below.

Lee, H. “Capturing 360° Audio Using an Equal Segment Microphone Array (ESMA)“, Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, Volume 67 Issue 1/2 pp. 13-26; January 2019.

Presentation at the AES North of England workshop on Capturing and Rendering Audio for Virtual Reality, 2017.