Parametric Time-Frequency Domain Spatial Audio

4 Overview of Time–Frequency Domain Parametric Spatial Audio Techniques

Archontis Politis, Symeon Delikaris-Manias, and Ville Pulkki

Department of Signal Processing and Acoustics, Aalto University, Finland

4.1 Introduction

Spatial sound reproduction is mainly concerned with delivering appropriate spatial cues using a reproduction system, loudspeakers or headphones, in order to provide a convincing, immersive, and engaging aural experience, close to the intentions of the producer for a synthetic sound scene, or to the original experience for a recorded one. Spatial sound content is commonly produced with a certain reproduction setup in mind, with the present standard being discrete surround multichannel systems such as the 5.1 and 7.1 surround setups. Hence, the content already contains all the relevant spatial cues created by the producer for the corresponding setup. In this case, a state-of-the-art reproduction method has to address the issues of (i) compression, meaning how to reduce the bandwidth of the content for delivery and transmission without affecting its perceptual impression, and (ii) up-mixing or down-mixing, meaning to recreate the spatial sound scene in target systems other than the originally intended one, in the best way possible. In the case of recorded sound scenes, there is the additional complexity of (iii) capturing the scene with a microphone array in such a way that it makes delivery of the spatial cues at reproduction possible. If the reproduction method ...