Sound reproduction in personal audio systems using the least-squares approach with acoustic contrast control constraint

This paper describes a method for focusing the reproduced sound in the bright zone without disturbing other people in the dark zone in personal audio systems. The proposed method combines the least-squares and acoustic contrast criteria. A constrained parameter is introduced to tune the balance between two performance indices, namely, the acoustic contrast and the spatial average error. An efficient implementation of this method using convex optimization is presented. Offline simulations and real-time experiments using a linear loudspeaker array are conducted to evaluate the performance of the presented method. Results show that compared with the traditional acoustic contrast control method, the proposed method can improve the flatness of response in the bright zone by sacrificing the level of acoustic contrast.