Maximization of acoustic energy difference between two spaces.

There has recently been an increasing interest in the generation of a sound field that is audible in one spatial region and inaudible in an adjacent region. The method proposed here ensures the control of the amplitude and phase of multiple acoustic sources in order to maximize the acoustic energy difference between two adjacent regions while also ensuring that evenly distributed source strengths are used. The performance of the method proposed is evaluated by computer simulations and experiments with real loudspeaker arrays in the shape of a circle and a sphere. The proposed method gives an improvement in the efficiency of radiation into the space in which the sound should be audible, while maintaining the acoustic pressure difference between two acoustic spaces. This is shown to give an improvement of performance compared to the contrast control method previously proposed.