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3D Listening Icon3DListening® Acoustic Simulation

Experience your space and evaluate its acoustical design before it is constructed.

Our acoustics simulation and rendering technology, 3DListening® (3DL) can play an important role in the design process, helping to develop designs, shape key spaces, and give a project team’s designers, building owners, and users the opportunity to listen together and quickly reach decisions about acoustically significant design features.

3DListening® auralizations are highly interactive, and available to experience both in-person or remotely:

  • In-person presentations can be performed in Acentech’s 3DListening® lab through a multi-loudspeaker array, rendered in ambisonics, vector-based amplitude panning (or a hybrid) to a client’s full project team Participants can control the system with a click of a mouse, instantly comparing design alternatives or simulation scenarios within one presentation.
  • Virtual presentations, using an online meeting platform such as Zoom with carefully selected headsets offer an ensured common listening experience for a team to gather and listen virtually.

Watch the video below to see how Acentech has used 3DL simulations for museums, business schools, performing arts centers, swimming pools, university libraries, corporate headquarters, and research projects.


Building on decades of research and supported by robust engineering, 3DL is an immersive three-dimensional acoustics simulation and rendering that can demonstrate the effects of acoustical designs for a space that is yet to be built. Acentech’s 3DL simulations are both accurate and believable, so you can forget about the technology and simply listen to your space in a typical use scenario. A 3DL model can help your team with:

  • Material choices: What acoustical finish materials are needed in your atrium, gym, or band room?
  • Loudspeaker systems: Will the public announcement system be intelligible in your auditorium, train station, or exhibit hall?
  • Sound isolation: Which floor-to-ceiling construction will ensure that residents are sufficiently undisturbed in your condo building?
  • Mechanical noise: How will noise from new fan coil units affect classroom learning conditions? How much will a rooftop noise barrier benefit neighbors?

Software tools used to create these sound simulations may include:

  • 3-dimensional building design software including Revit, Rhino, and SketchUp
  • Acentech’s software tools, developed in Matlab and Max/MSP, for ambisonic impulse response measurement
  • Room acoustics modeling with CATT-Acoustic, Pachyderm, and experimental tools
  • Audio editing software including Reaper and Audacity
  • Signal processing using Matlab and Max/MSP programming environments
  • Max/MSP programming environment for presentation and real-time convolution