Some time ago we have published an approach to the synthesis of sound figures. A surrounding three-dimensional loudspeaker array can be used to synthesize an (more or less) arbitrary shaped zone with higher sound level. See what we have simulated these days 
The sound field has been synthesized by a cubic array consisting of 21,600 point sources (60×60 with a spacing of 10 centimeters at each side). The shape of the figure has been defined by a PNG image. The desired sound field is a monocromatic plane wave with 2000 Hz, an incidence angle of 90 degrees in the horizontal plane and 45 degrees in elevation. Shown is the xy-plane for z=0.
We are currently active in porting the SFS-Toolbox from MATLAB to Python. The Python SFS-Toolbox together with source code for the synthesis of sound figures is available on GitHub. Have fun in creating your own fancy sound figures. Happy Christmas!
