Parametric Spatial Sound Processing

doi:10.1109/MSP.2014.2369531

Parametric Spatial Sound Processing

2015-03-01

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DOI：10.1109/MSP.2014.2369531

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Flexible and efficient spatial sound acquisition and subsequent processing are of paramount importance in communication and assisted listening devices such as mobile phones, hearing aids, smart TVs, and emerging wearable devices (e.g., smart watches and glasses). In application scenarios where the number of sound sources quickly varies, sources move, and nonstationary noise and reverberation are commonly encountered, it remains a challenge to capture sounds in such a way that they can be reproduced with a high and invariable sound quality. In addition, the objective in terms of what needs to be captured, and how it should be reproduced, depends on the application and on the user's preferences. Parametric spatial sound processing has been around for two decades and provides a flexible and efficient solution to capture, code, and transmit, as well as manipulate and reproduce spatial sounds. Instrumental to this type of processing is a parametric model that can describe a sound field in a compact and general way. In most cases, the sound field can be decomposed into a direct sound component and a diffuse sound component. These two components together with parametric side information such as the direction-of-arrival (DOA) of the direct sound component or the position of the sound source, provide a perceptually motivated description of the acoustic scene [1]-[3]. In this article, we provide an overview of recent advances in spatial sound capturing, manipulation, and reproduction based on such parametric descriptions of the sound field. In particular, we focus on two established parametric descriptions presented in a unified way and show how the signals and parameters can be obtained using multiple microphones. Once the sound field is analyzed, the sound scene can be transmitted, manipulated, and synthesized depending on the application. For example, sounds can be extracted from a specific direction or from a specific arbitrary two-dimensional or even three-dimensional region of interest. Furthermore, the sound scene can be manipulated to create an acoustic zoom effect in which direct sounds within the listening angular range are amplified depending on the zoom factor, while other sounds are suppressed. In addition, the signals and parameters can be used to create surround sound signals. As the manipulation and synthesis are highly application dependent, we focus in this article on three illustrative assisted listening applications: spatial audio communication, virtual classroom, and binaural hearing aids.

Keywords:

DIFFUSE SOUND

REPRODUCTION

COHERENCE

Parametric Spatial Sound Processing

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