Spatial audio teleconferencing

A spatial sound conferencing server comprising:

• an input processor for receiving audio and position and orientation information from at least one network client;
• a conference processor for spatializing the audio according to the received position and orientation information;
• an output interface for transmitting the spatialized audio to the at least one network client;
• and
• a connection manager, in operative communication with the conference processor, for defining conferences associated with each client, the audio mix transmitted to a client corresponding to a conference associated with that client, wherein:
• the input processor receives audio and position and orientation information from a plurality of network clients, the conference processor creating, for each client, a mix of audio from other clients spatialized according to the received position and orientation information;
• the positional information is represented in a world model;
• each client corresponds to a user;
• for a first client, the associated conference comprises audio from other clients corresponding to users who are proximate to the first-client user in the world model;
• and
• the conference processor comprises means for spatializing the audio by:
• modeling a Doppler motion effect by delaying sound to the first client by a time proportional to a distance between the first-client user and a sound source as represented in the world model;
• filtering to model object occlusion;
• scaling by a gain inversely proportional to the distance between the listener and the sound source to model distance cues;
• filtering by a pair of HRTFs to encode localization cues;
• and
• summing the resulting stereo signal with stereo reverberation.