Environmental Monitoring Using Arbitrary Microphone Arrays

Applications of this new audio zoom system include a “super” hearing aid for people in a crowded noisy environment. Such a hearing aid will have performance far exceeding any standard hearing aid with microphones near the ears. Audio zoom may be very useful for the film industry, to capture better quality audio during on-location filming, and reduce the amount of rerecording and post-production required. It may also be useful for the computer games industry where zooming on natural sounds may be desired as part of the game-play. Audio zoom will be a very useful research tool for studying bird communications, providing detailed spatial information on territorial birdsong, which may help decipher the song function.