Audio I/O In VR

B582 VR Hardware Presentation
Ying Feng, Feb. 2000

4. Products

Microphones, HeadPhones and Speakers:

"3D" sound chips and cards:

Product	Manufacturer	Features	Deficiencies	Price & Time
Convolvotron	Crystal River Engineering	models 4 distinct directional sounds in real time	expensive	$15,000, 1987
Acoustetron II	Crystal River Engineering	16 different sounds simultaneously	expensive	early 1990's
Protron	Crystal River Engineering	mix 3D audio by viewing the spatial cues of different sounds	not real time, used for MAC platform.	$995, latest
Focal Point	Focal Point 3D Audio	bring tools for creating 3D audio on personal computers	can not compare to the abilities of the Acoustetron II	$900, 1994
The Poor Man's 3D Sound	Advanced Gravis	can pan 32 voices to 15 different positions with various features and compatibility with many other products	slimmed down version of Focal Point	$245, 1994
Sound Reproductions Systems	Hughes Aircraft company	clever circuitry, two channels, spatial cues of based on HRTF
Stratos 3D multimedia accelerator cards	Genoa Systems Corporation	3D graphic acceleration and SRS 3D sound technology for DirectX

For details about the above products, refer to Terry Smith's paper Implementing 3D Sound,

Spatial, binaural & surround sound systems:

Product Manufacturer Features Defficiencies Price & Time

Vivid 3D sound Systems NuReality convert existing mono or stereo input to realistic spatial
enhanced 3D sound for PC and home stereo cannot retain the true spatial locations of sounds but rather attempt to simulate realistic sound cues 1996

SoundStorm 3D Reality by Design large library of high-fidelity sound effects; modular plug 'n' play system; total control over sound environment; 1996

UltraQ QSound amazingly life-like 3D sound; can enhance CD music and Internet audio. $69.95, 1999

HTMS·2510® 3-D Stereo Surround Sound System Spatializer Audio Laboratories self-contained surround sound system in one unit; simple and affordable. $99, 1999

Spatializer Retro Spatializer Audio Laboratories professional real-time 3-D; complete control over the amount of spatialization $649, 1999

TrueVerb Reverb Distance, Virtual Space Processor Waves Audio Signal Processing

Software integrated with virtual sound systems:

SND 1.1: 3D sound mixing software thoroughly integrated with 3D Studio Max. Real time surround mixing system with position tracking is currently under development.
VSS by NCSA's Audio Development Group: platform-independent API supporting VR, Sound Authoring and Sonification.
SoundBase by Visual Synthesis Incorporated: sample Libraries crafted specifically for real-time multidimensional spatial environments. Starter SoundBase Libraries are included with Audio Architect, Sonic Architect and the Audio Image SoundCube.
DirectSound 3D by Microsoft allows application developers to program artificial worlds on Microsoft operating systems given the tools that they need.

Voice recognition and synthesis:

Speech Processing Board by Lucent: a speech processing system capable of supporting high channel density speech recognition and text-to-speech for telephony-based applications.
Text-to-Speech Synthesis by Bell Lab: voice synthesis system capable of synthesizing various voices from text input.

If you have comments or suggestions, email me at yfeng@cs.indiana.edu