An Immersive Multi-Party Conferencing System for Mobile Devices Using Binaural Audio

Aguilera E, Lopez J, Gutierrez P, Cobos M. An Immersive Multi-Party Conferencing System for Mobile Devices Using Binaural Audio. In: AES Conference: 55th International Conference: Spatial Audio. Audio Engineering Society; 2014. Paper 4-3. Available from: https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=17384

@inproceedings{Aguilera2014_17384,
  author = {Aguilera, Emanuel and Lopez, Jose and Gutierrez, Pablo and Cobos, Maximo},
  title = {{An Immersive Multi-Party Conferencing System for Mobile Devices Using Binaural Audio}},
  booktitle = {AES Conference: 55th International Conference: Spatial Audio},
  note = {Paper 4-3},
  year = {2014},
  month = aug,
  publisher = {Audio Engineering Society},
  url = {https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=17384}
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - An Immersive Multi-Party Conferencing System for Mobile Devices Using Binaural Audio
AU  - Aguilera, Emanuel
AU  - Lopez, Jose
AU  - Gutierrez, Pablo
AU  - Cobos, Maximo
T2  - AES Conference: 55th International Conference: Spatial Audio
M1  - Paper 4-3
PY  - 2014
DA  - 2014/08/06
UR  - https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=17384
PB  - Audio Engineering Society
LA  - en
AB  - The use of mobile telephony, along with the widespread of smartphones in the consumer market, is gradually displacing traditional telephony. Fixed-line telephone conference calls have been widely employed for carrying out distributed meetings around the world in the last decades. However, the powerful characteristics brought by modern mobile devices and data networks allow for new conferencing schemes based on immersive communication, one the fields having major commercial and technical interest within the telecommunications industry today. In this context, adding spatial audio features into conventional conferencing systems is a natural way of creating a realistic communication environment. In fact, the human auditory system takes advantage of spatial audio cues to locate, separate and understand multiple speakers when they talk simultaneously. As a result, speech intelligibility is significantly improved if the speakers are simulated to be spatially distributed. This paper describes the development of a new immersive multi-party conference call service for mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) that substantially improves the identification and intelligibility of the participants. Headphone-based audio reproduction and binaural sound processing algorithms allow the user to locate the different speakers within a virtual meeting room. Moreover, the use of a large touch screen helps the user to identify and remember the participants taking part in the conference, with the possibility of changing their spatial location in an interactive way.
ER  -