Auditory Localization in Low-Bitrate Compressed Ambisonic Scenes

TY - JOUR

T1 - Auditory Localization in Low-Bitrate Compressed Ambisonic Scenes

AU - Rudzki, Tomasz

AU - Gomez-Lanzaco, Ignacio

AU - Stubbs, Jessica

AU - Skoglund, Jan

AU - Murphy, Damian Thomas

AU - Kearney, Gavin Cyril

N1 - © 2019 by the authors

PY - 2019/6/28

Y1 - 2019/6/28

N2 - The increasing popularity of Ambisonics as a spatial audio format for streaming services poses new challenges to existing audio coding techniques. Immersive audio delivered to mobile devices requires an efficient bitrate compression that does not affect the spatial quality of the content. Good localizability of virtual sound sources is one of the key elements that must be preserved. This study was conducted to investigate the localization precision of virtual sound source presentations within Ambisonic scenes encoded with Opus low-bitrate compression at different bitrates and Ambisonic orders (1st, 3rd, and 5th). The test stimuli were reproduced over a 50-channel spherical loudspeaker configuration and binaurally using individually measured and generic Head-Related Transfer Functions (HRTFs). Participants were asked to adjust the position of a virtual acoustic pointer to match the position of virtual sound source within the bitrate-compressed Ambisonic scene. Results show that auditory localization in low-bitrate compressed Ambisonic scenes is not significantly affected by codec parameters. The key factors influencing localization are the rendering method and Ambisonic order truncation. This suggests that efficient perceptual coding might be successfully used for mobile spatial audio delivery.

AB - The increasing popularity of Ambisonics as a spatial audio format for streaming services poses new challenges to existing audio coding techniques. Immersive audio delivered to mobile devices requires an efficient bitrate compression that does not affect the spatial quality of the content. Good localizability of virtual sound sources is one of the key elements that must be preserved. This study was conducted to investigate the localization precision of virtual sound source presentations within Ambisonic scenes encoded with Opus low-bitrate compression at different bitrates and Ambisonic orders (1st, 3rd, and 5th). The test stimuli were reproduced over a 50-channel spherical loudspeaker configuration and binaurally using individually measured and generic Head-Related Transfer Functions (HRTFs). Participants were asked to adjust the position of a virtual acoustic pointer to match the position of virtual sound source within the bitrate-compressed Ambisonic scene. Results show that auditory localization in low-bitrate compressed Ambisonic scenes is not significantly affected by codec parameters. The key factors influencing localization are the rendering method and Ambisonic order truncation. This suggests that efficient perceptual coding might be successfully used for mobile spatial audio delivery.

KW - spatial audio

KW - perceptual evaluation

KW - listening tests

KW - ambisonics

KW - binaural

KW - bitrate compression

KW - auditory localization

KW - audio codec

KW - opus

KW - streaming

U2 - 10.3390/app9132618

DO - 10.3390/app9132618

M3 - Article

SN - 2076-3417

VL - 9

JO - Applied Sciences

JF - Applied Sciences

IS - 13

M1 - 2618

ER -