Patent ID: 8041040

Claim:
A sound image control apparatus, comprising: a distance gain controller that performs a gain control of a sound pressure of a monaural audio input signal of one channel with respect to a distance direction from a head to a sound image; a first sound image localizer that performs a sound image localization operation of an elevation angle and azimuth on the monaural audio signal of one channel subjected to the gain control in the distance gain controller, based on first parameter data corresponding to a position in which the sound image is localized, and outputs a first stereo audio signal of two channels in a first virtual sound field; a second sound image localizer that performs a sound image localization operation of an elevation angle and azimuth on the monaural audio signal of one channel subjected to the gain control in the distance gain control section, based on second parameter data corresponding to a position in which the sound image is localized, and outputs a second stereo audio signal of two channels in a second virtual sound field; a Panning Gain controller that performs cross-fade processing on the first and second stereo audio signals of two channels outputted from the first and second sound image localizers and performs gain control of a sound pressure of the first and second stereo audio signals of two channels; a localized sound/virtual reflected sound adder that generates a stereo audio output signal of two channels by adding, per channel, the first and second stereo audio signals of two channels subjected to the gain control in the Panning Gain controller; and a sound image controller that sets a first gain value to be used in the gain control in the distance gain controller, the first parameter data to be used in the first sound image localizer, the second parameter data to be used in the second sound image localizer, and a second gain value to be used in the gain control in the Panning Gain controller.