Spatial Audio Processing: MPEG Surround and Other Applications

3.7 Conclusions

Spatial audio coding and processing aims at achieving certain goals by exploiting properties of spatial hearing. Spatial hearing and limitations of the human auditory system were discussed. Spatial audio coding and processing manipulate the signal inherent properties which are relevant for spatial hearing. For example, Spatial audio coding achieves data reduction by not representing each signal waveform directly, but by means of a down-mix signal and restoring during decoding only the signal properties which are important for the perception of the auditory spatial image.