SOFA: Spatially Oriented Format for Acoustics

The spatially oriented format for acoustics (SOFA) is dedicated to store all kinds of acoustic informations related to a specified geometrical setup. The main task is to describe simple HRTF measurements, but SOFA also aims to provide the functionality to store measurements of something fancy like BRIRs with a 64-channel mic-array in a multi-source excitation situation or directivity measurement of a loudspeaker. The format is intended to be easily extendable, highly portable, and actually the greatest common divider of all publicly available HRTF databases at the moment of writing.

SOFA defines the structure of data and meta data and stores them in a numerical container. The data description will be a hierarchical description when coming from free-field HRTFs (simple setup) and going to more complex setups like mic-array measurements in reverberant spaces, excited by a loudspeaker array (complex setup). We will use global geometry description (related to the room), and local geometry description (related to the listener/source) without limiting the number of acoustic transmitters and receivers. Room descriptions will be available by linking a CAD file within SOFA. Networking support will be provided as well allowing to remotely access HRTFs and BRIRs from client computers.

SOFA is being developed by many contributors worldwide. The development is coordinated at ARI by Piotr Majdak.