CAO for Virtual Venues (VV) Reference Project

Virtual Venues provides a virtual reality audio experience to the listener. Imagine being in your car, but with the sound of a concert hall or rainfall surrounding you. That’s the magic of Virtual Venues (VV).
The Virtual Venues uses strategically placed microphones and cutting-edge audio processing to create a virtual reality soundscape personalized for your vehicle.

The microphones capture all the sounds inside your car. Then, Virtual Venue transforms those sounds. It analyzes the acoustics of a chosen venue, like a concert hall. Using this information as a reference, VV blends the recreated venue acoustics with the sounds already in your car. As a result a realistic and immersive sound experience, all without leaving your driver’s seat.

Headliner and headrest speakers act as virtual venue walls and surfaces and they can be individually controlled.
In Adaptive spatialization, Speed dependent modules like filters and compressors adaptively stabilize the reverberation effect by minimizing the disruptive impact of road and engine noise.

The Virtual Venues must be placed before the system tuning (usually channel gains, delays, crossovers, and loudspeaker equalization).

It is also highly recommended to use protection limiters for all channels right before routing to the loudspeakers.

The VV CAO signal flow consists of different sub sections:

• Input pins
• Mic Tuning
• Reverb Tuning
• Dry/wet adjustment
• Output Pins

Input Pins: The VV CAO has 6 input pins:

1. Stereo left in
2. Stereo right in
3. Mic 1
4. Mic 2
5. Mic 3
6. Mic 4

Mic Tuning: The section consists of the audio objects Parameter Biquad (Speed dependent EQ), Gain, and Autobalance (for balancing microphone levels).

Reverb Tuning: Consists of the Venueverb Module for following activity.

• Cross Faders for mixing together dry/wet signal parts and mic/music signals.
• VenueVerb
• Parameter Biquads (Reverberation EQ).

Dry & wet Adjustment: Consists of Gain and Crossfader audio objects.

Output Pins: There are 8 output pins, formulating four L-R pairs mixed with reverb and all mic signals, i.e., output 1-2, output 3-4, output 5-6, and output 7-8.

There are multiple sections on the main panel for different functionalities. The Virtual Venues panel consists of following sections.

1. Bypass Virtual Venues
2. Output Master Gain
3. Reverb Tuning
4. Dry/Wet Adjustment

1. Bypass Control Virtual Venues:  This section has a gain dial available for the Bypass mode, to level match with the VV mode.

2. Output Master Gain:  The fader scale controls the master gain of all 8 output channels.

3. Reverb Tuning: This section contains the core functionality of reverb generation and mic signal mixing. Besides individual gain controls for all six inputs, and a shortcut for mic kill switch, there are five subpanels implemented.

• Venue Reverb Generator: Containing the hall generator with detailed controls of the reverb sound (wet signal generation).
• Mic Auto Balance: For tuning of mic signal mixing.
• Venue Reverb Global EQ: Overall EQ shaping the spectrum of the reverb sound (wet signal).
• Mic Channel EQ: With static biquads for each mic channel, to suppress the feedback resonance.
• Venue Reverb Channel EQ: Individual EQ control for each output channel.

4. Dry/Wet Adjustment: Mixing of the direct stereo inputs (dry signals) and the reverb sound (wet signals) is adjusted through following options.

• Crossfaders that controls the dry/wet proportion of each output pair. In total, there are 4 crossfaders for the 4 output pairs.
  • CrossFader Ch 1-2
  • CrossFader Ch 3-4
  • CrossFader Ch 5-6
  • CrossFader Ch 7-8
• Scales for master gain control of the dry/wet proportion of all 8 output channels.

Preset Files

The Virtual Venues CAO has 3 preset files: large, medium and small corresponding to difference in reverb settings along with room size difference.