Convention e-Brief 168 Evaluation of Binaural Renderers: A Methodology (original) (raw)
Related papers
A Roadmap for Assessing the Quality of Experience of 3D Audio Binaural Rendering
Today there are 2 major evolutions in spatial audio. First, an enhanced 3D audio experience, where virtual sound sources can be accurately synthesized in any direction, is possible with technologies such as binaural, Wave Field Synthesis, Higher Order Ambisonics or Vector Base Amplitude Panning. Second, 3D audio is on the way to being democratized through binaural adaptation for headphone listening. These evolutions call for revisiting the methods and tools used to assess the perception of spatial sound reproduction. The first objective of this paper is to delineate the problem, by exploring the potential dimensions and the related attributes underlying the perception of spatial sound, mainly within the context of binaural reproduction. Secondly, assessment methods, including both standard and less conventional ones, are listed, and their relevance for the measure of the attributes previously identified is discussed.
Evaluation of Binaural Renderers: Multidimensional Sound Quality Assessment
A multi-phase subjective experiment evaluating six commercially available binaural audio renderers was carried out. This paper presents the methodology, evaluation criteria, and main findings of the tests which assessed perceived sound quality of the renderers. Subjects appraised a number of specific sound quality attributes-timbral balance, clarity, naturalness, spaciousness, and dialogue intelligibility-and ranked, in terms of preference, the renderers for a set of music and movie stimuli presented over headphones. Results indicated that differences between the perceived quality and preference for a renderer are discernible. Binaural renderer performance was also found to be highly content-dependent, with significant interactions between renderers and individual stimuli being found, making it difficult to determine an "optimal" renderer for all settings.
Evaluation of Binaural Renderers: Externalization, Front/Back and Up/Down Confusions
Binaural renderers can be used to reproduce dynamic spatial audio over headphones and deliver immersive audio content. Six commercially available binaural renderers with different rendering methodologies were evaluated in a multi-phase subjective study. This paper presents and discusses the testing methodology, evaluation criteria, and main findings of the externalization, front/back discrimination and up/down discrimination tasks which are part of the first phase. A statistical analysis over a large number of subjects revealed that the choice of renderer has a significant effect on all three dependent measures. Further, ratings of perceived externalization for the renderers were found to be content-specific, while renderer reversal rates were much more robust to different stimuli.
Evaluation of Binaural Renderers: Localization
Binaural renderers can be used to reproduce spatial audio over headphones. A number of different renderers have recently become commercially available for use in creating immersive audio content. High-quality spatial audio can be used to significantly enhance experiences in a number of different media applications, such as virtual, mixed and augmented reality, computer games, and music and movie. A large multi-phase experiment evaluating six commercial binaural renderers was performed. This paper presents the methodology, evaluation criteria, and main findings of the horizontal-plane source localization experiment carried out with these renderers. Significant differences between renderers' regional localization accuracy were found. Consistent with previous research, subjects tended to localize better in the front and back of the head than at the sides. Differences between renderer performance at the side regions heavily contributed to their overall regional localization accuracy.
Binaural Rendering for Enhanced 3D Audio Perception
Proceedings of the …, 2007
Despite the recent advantages on multichannel audio coding and playback technologies, 3D audio positioning is frequently required to be performed over legacy stereo loudspeaker setups, due to certain application limitations and restrictions mainly presented in portable and low cost systems. In this work, a 3D audio platform is introduced which allows the real-time conversion of any stereo audio signal to a high-quality immersive audio stream using binaural technology. Due to a number of advanced binaural processing algorithms and features, the proposed conversion platform demonstrates perceptually improved 3D audio spatialization, rendering it suitable for implementing high-quality immersive audio applications.
Analysis of Binaural Technology and Surround Rendering for Headphones Reproduction
This research is based on the Binaural rendering from Surround sound. As Binaural and Surround systems are becoming more accurate and able to give a fully-immersive perception of sound through headphones, the importance of understanding how these systems work is necessary to better use, develop, and implement Binaural in the everyday routine. Binaural, its history, features and limitations has been analysed. Surround systems, such as 5.1 and Ambisonics, have been analysed and compared for Binaural Rendering purposes. Ambisonics has shown that its versatility and 360 degrees spatial audio characteristics can be used to accurately render Binaural signals.
Binaural technology for e.g. rendering auditory virtual environments
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2008
Jens Blauert's research up through the late 60ties and later, pioneered the field of binaural technology and auditory virtual environments. He mastered the measurement of head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) before the term was introduced, and his methods were standard for decades. While most acknowledge his efforts in understanding the binaural hearing and the significance of inter-aural differences, appreciation is also in place for his evaluation of localization with identical ear input signals. The relations between the hearing's "directional" bands and the transfer functions' "boosted" bands, helped mediate the understanding that if the transfer functions could be mastered, then important dimensions of the auditory percept could also be controlled. He early understood the potential of using the HRTFs and numerical sound transmission analysis programs for rendering auditory virtual environments. Jens Blauert participated in many European cooperation projects exploring this field (and others), among other the SCATIS project addressing the auditory-tactile dimensions in the absence of visual information.
A 3D REAL TIME RENDERING ENGINE FOR BINAURAL SOUND REPRODUCTION
2003
A method of computationally efficient 3D sound reproduction via headphones is presented using a virtual Ambisonic approach. Previous studies have shown that incorporating head tracking as well as room simulation is important to improve sound source localization capabilities. The simulation of virtual acoustic space requires to filter the stimuli with head related transfer functions (HRTFs). In time-varying systems this yields
2015
In the absence of a well suited measure for quantifying binaural data variations, this study presents the use of a global perceptual distance metric which can describe both HRTF as well as listener similarities. The metric is derived based on subjective evaluations of binaural renderings of a sound moving along predefined trajectories in the horizontal and median planes. Its characteristics and advantages in describing data distributions based on perceptually relevant attributes are discussed. In addition, the use of 24 HRTFs from two different databases of origin allows for an evaluation of the perceptual impact of some database-dependent characteristics on spatialization. The effectiveness of the experimental design as well as the correlation between the HRTF evaluations of the two plane trajectories are also discussed.
Binaural tools for 3D audio production at home
2017
We present two innovative software tools for editing and rendering immersive audio that allow taking the post-production process outside professional studios. The Binaural Home Studio allows to post-produce either 3D or binaural audio while offering special 3D effect functionalities. The contents produced can be listened and therefore tested with head-tracking headphones throughout the Binaural Player. The binaural output produced by the player is interactive, in the sense that adapts to head movements using a head-tracking headphone which gives to both content creators and endusers more realism and sense of presence. Index Terms – Binaural audio, 3D audio, ambisonics,