Perception of Spatial Sound Phenomena Created by the Icosahedral Loudspeaker

The icosahedral loudspeaker (IKO) is able to project strongly focused sound beams into arbitrary directions. Incorporating artistic experience and psychoacoustic research, this article presents three listening experiments that provide evidence for a common, intersubjective perception of spatial sonic phenomena created by the IKO. The experiments are designed on the basis of a hierarchical model of spatiosonic phenomena that exhibit increasing complexity, ranging from a single static sonic object to combinations of multiple, partly moving objects. The results are promising and explore new compositional perspectives in spatial computer music.