Sorama broke the Guinness World Record for Largest Microphone Array by a factor four with respect to the old record held by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The old record array holds 1.020 microphones in one system, while Sorama realised an array with 4.096 microphones. The record was set on August the 21st at the Sorama headquarters in Eindhoven.
The former ‘World’s Largest Microphone Array’, “LOUD” (Large Acoustic Data array project) consists of 1.020 microphones in a single grid. This enables researchers to locate, follow and amplify individual voices in a crowd. The array was built by a team of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA, USA) led by Professor Anant Agarwal, and became operational in January 2004. Currently the old record is still mentioned on the Guinness World Record Website: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/records-3000/largest-microphone-array/ and will be replaced by the Sorama record at short notice.
During the record attempt the Sorama team performed multiple measurements to illustrate that all individual microphones were operational and also show its applications. A short video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7VeKUq5hzg) illustrates these applications including far- and near-field sound imaging. Two independent experts in the field of array processing formally verified and acknowledged the record; Dr. Paul Zeijl, CTO and co-founder of Omniradar, a developer of radar systems on a chip, he is an expert in the field of high-frequency echolocation with radar arrays. Dr. Piet Sommen is a lecturer and researcher at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Eindhoven University of Technology, he is a specialist in signal processing and (acoustic) arrays.