Loudspeaker Array-Based Auralization of Electric Vehicle Noise in Living Environments

Paper in proceeding, 2025

With the ongoing shift towards electromobility, electric vehicle warning sounds are becoming increasingly prevalent in urban areas, and listening experiments investigating the possible influence of such sounds on human health and well-being are needed. For this purpose, we recently presented an electric vehicle auralization toolbox, which we extend with this paper by implementing a speaker-based reproduction approach in our Living Room Lab. This lab consists of two adjacent rooms coupled with a window: one designed to resemble a typical living space and one equipped with an array of 24 loudspeakers. Employing sound field synthesis, we use these loudspeakers to recreate the sound field of an outdoor electric vehicle pass-by in the sending room, which then propagates through the window and results in a spatially accurate sound field in the receiving living room. In this study, we assess different array setups and synthesis strategies to mitigate time structure distortions of vehicle passages caused by the finite aperture of the loudspeaker array. Modeling the sound propagation between the two coupled rooms, we numerically compare these methods to a simulated continuous outdoor pass-by and perceptually evaluate the results by auralizing the simulated sound fields at a listening position.