In 1988 professor Berkhout invented the principle of Wave Field Synthesis (WFS).

Wave Field Synthesis is based on the Huygens’ principle. In his Traité de la lumière Christiaan Huygens stated that a wavefront can be reconstructed from a continuous distribution of secondary sources on the wave front.

Lord Rayleigh advanced this theory by showing that one can do the same with secondary sources in a plane.

Professor Berkhout conceived the idea that subsequently it is possible to reconstruct a virtual source.

An advantage of WFS is that the ’sweet spot’, typical for stereo reproduction, is enlarged to a ’sweet area’. This is because the reproduction is not based on psychoacoustical principles but on a physical reproduction of the sound field.

A ’sweet spot’ means that there is only one listening position where the spatial effect is rendered correctly. A ’sweet area’ means that there is a listing area and as a result many listeners can perceive the spatial rendering correctly at the same time.

A consequence of the physical reproduction of the sound field is that Doppler effects (think of the sound of a passing siren) are rendered in a natural way.

In WFS sounds can be placed in front of the speakers. This is called a ‘focused source’. A restriction is though that this does not work if the listener is situated between the source and the speakers.