Anyone Knowledgeable about Sound Processing? (algorithms)

[extropalopakettle]

I was listening to an awesome thunderstorm today, and noticed in particular how the sound of thunder has this sort of two-dimensional texture, a single long rumble of it emanating different timbres and frequencies from different parts of the sky.

Now, I have a rough idea how human stereoscopic hearing works: The brain detects the latency between when a sound reaches one ear versus the other, and from this can judge it's position, at least along a one-dimensional left-right axis (we can usually get a good sense of up versus down too by tilting our heads, something we do unconsciously). We manage to do this for many sounds happening at once, locating them all in space.

Theoretically, with three microphones spaced apart, recording the same sound, one should be able to process it and calculate a relative direction from which the sound emanated.

I thought it would be cool to do this, and create visual representations of the frequencies emanating from different directions. This could be done with the sound of thunder, or a tree full of birds, or any setting in which many sounds are coming from different directions. The result should be a movie, a changing two dimensional field of color, with color mapped to frequency (there would be a loss of information, like timbre).

I'd imagine what I need is an algorithm which could take a sound file and convert it to data about the dominant frequencies over time. Anyone know what algorithms do this? Is Fourier transform what I want?

(I'm not looking for code, just the basic math / algorithms)

[extropalopakettle]

(What ever happened to Luna, and who knows why I asked?)

[Antrax]

I know why you asked, and I'm pretty sure FFT is what you need.
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[Courk]

Wouldn't you need 4 microphones? 3 points merely define a plane.

[Zag]

This is essentially how GPS works, except that it is radio waves, not sound waves. And in reverse: that is. the multiple points are signal sources, and the single point you're trying to identify is the only receiver.

Did you know that if they didn't take Einsteinian time dilation into account (two sources -- receiver being in a gravity well and sources accelerating through space), then GPS calculations would lose accuracy by 10 feet a day, until they became completely useless in a year or two.

[Courk]

I'd think sooner than a year -- after a year you're already over half a mile off the mark.

[extro...*]

[Jack_Ian]

Multiple computers. Don't worry about synchronising. Just make some noise from a known location after the computers are set up and use this noise to calibrate the subsequent data.

[cb*]