Patent ID: 7319760

Claim:
An apparatus for creating a sound image of an input sound signal in association with a moving point and a fixed point along a time axis, the sound image being associated with one of the moving point and the fixed point and the input sound signal being associated with the other one of the moving point and the fixed point, the apparatus comprising: a setting section that sets input factors including a trajectory line which may be curved or straight and which represents a trajectory of the moving point, a nominal velocity of the moving point, a movement start time at which the moving point starts moving, a movement end time at which the moving point ends moving, and a closest approach time at which a distance between the moving point on the trajectory line and the fixed point is minimized; a position computation section that computes a closest approach position which is a position of the moving point on the trajectory line at the closest approach time, a movement start position which is a position of the moving point on the trajectory line at the movement start time, and a movement end position which is a position of the moving point on the trajectory line at the movement end time, on the basis of the input factors set by the setting section, wherein the position computation section determines, as the movement end position, a position obtained by moving the moving point from the closest approach position along the trajectory at the nominal velocity in a predetermined direction by an amount of time corresponding to a difference between the movement end time and the closest approach time, and determines, as the movement start position, a position obtained by moving the moving point from the closest approach position along the trajectory at the nominal velocity in a direction reverse to the predetermined direction by an amount of time corresponding to a difference between the movement start time and the closest approach time; a distance computation section that computes intermediate positions of the moving point along the trajectory line from the movement start position to the movement end position between the movement start time and the movement end time, and further computes a variable distance between each of the intermediate positions of the moving point and the fixed point; a velocity computation section that computes a variable velocity of the moving point relative to the fixed point along the time axis on the basis of the variable distance computed by the distance computation section; and a signal processing section that attenuates or delays the input sound signal in accordance with the variable distance computed by the distance computation section and that varies a pitch of the input sound signal on the basis of the variable velocity computed by the velocity computation section, thereby creating the sound image of the input sound signal along the time axis.