A control method for balancing the reproductive performance and the acoustic contrast performance in a personal audio system

Achieving a personal audio system using a loudspeaker array means that generating a clearly desired audible sound in one listening zone, called bright zone, whilst ensuring that it is inaudible in other zones, called dark zones. The car cabin is becoming an interesting environment for a personal audio system. In order to achieve a personal audio system inside a car cabin, with the array effort of the loudspeaker array constrained and the measured errors of transfer functions existing in the practical application, PSR-RC method is proposed to balance the reproductive performance of the bright zone and the sound energy in the dark zones. Path-following algorithm is applied for the identification of optimal weights at different frequencies. From the results of the off-line simulation and the real-time experiment, it can be concluded that with the speech quality of the reproductive sound in the bright zone guaranteed, PSR-RC method can achieve a satisfied contrast performance between the bright zone and dark zones. The simulation results match the results of the real-time experiment well and the performance of the non-controlled points also matches the performance of the controlled points, which shows the accuracy and validity of PSR-RC method.