Auditory Virtual Environment (AVE)

An auditory virtual environment (AVE) is a virtual environment (VE) that focuses on the auditory domain only. It sees itself independent form other modalities like vision and tactility. Nevertheless an AVE could also be combined with the visual and haptic domain. Depending on the application, the user may be only a passive receiver or even be able to interact with the environment.

There are three different approaches for implementations of AVEs:
   
1 - Authentic reproduction of real existing environments.

The virtual room should evoke in the listener the same percepts that would have been  evoked by the corresponding real environment. He should have same spatial impression moving through and perceive his own movement inside the environment as well as the movements of sound sources.


2 - Reproduction of plausible auditory events

This approach tries to evoke auditory events which the listener perceives as having occurred   in a real environment. Here only those features are implemented which are needed for a specific simulation situation.


3 - Creation of non-authentic and non-plausible auditory events or environments.

The virtual room doesn't evoke percepts in the listener which are related to a real acoustic environment.

References:

Pedro Novo. Auditory Virtual Environments. In Communication Acoustics, Jens Blauert, Berlin 2005, p. 277-292.