THE TESSERACT: A PORTABLE HIGH-DENSITY LOUDSPEAKER ARRAY FOR SPATIAL SONIFICATION AND AURALIZATION

Virginia Tech’s Cube hosts a 140-channel high-density loudspeaker array, which is highly sought after by composers, technologists, artists, and researchers for presentation of controlled spatial audio in an immersive environment. Since the Cube is in high demand, a portable spatial audio system, The Tesseract, was designed, developed, and constructed to make spatialized sonification more accessible. The Tesseract merges art and science through technological advances and a state-of-the-art configuration allowing for spatial audio presentation almost anywhere for social and research purposes. The Tesseract mobile immersive audio system presents spatial audio for multiple listeners with an emphasis on sonification, which entails the transformation of data into intelligible audio formats. This report discusses the technical implementation and use cases of spatial audio implementation of The Tesseract since its inception in 2020. Specific use cases consist of real-time sonification of data for cybersecurity awareness, auditory multi-modal presentation of sound (air and bone conduction) for human subjects psychoacoustic investigation, and an auditory immersive pedestrian crosswalk simulation for training vulnerable road users. In addition, discussions include performance comparisons between the first design and the current Tesseract model aimed at highlighting lessons learned to be incorporated into the production of future models.