Perceptual Evaluation of Bitrate Compressed Ambisonic Scenes in Loudspeaker Based Reproduction

Rudzki T, Gomez-Lanzaco I, Hening P, Skoglund J, McKenzie T, Stubbs J, Murphy D, Kearney G. Perceptual Evaluation of Bitrate Compressed Ambisonic Scenes in Loudspeaker Based Reproduction. In: AES Conference: 2019 AES International Conference on Immersive and Interactive Audio. Audio Engineering Society; 2019. Paper 100. Available from: https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=20391

@inproceedings{Rudzki2019_20391,
  author = {Rudzki, Tomasz and Gomez-Lanzaco, Ignacio and Hening, Pierce and Skoglund, Jan and McKenzie, Thomas and Stubbs, Jessica and Murphy, Damian and Kearney, Gavin},
  title = {{Perceptual Evaluation of Bitrate Compressed Ambisonic Scenes in Loudspeaker Based Reproduction}},
  booktitle = {AES Conference: 2019 AES International Conference on Immersive and Interactive Audio},
  note = {Paper 100},
  year = {2019},
  month = mar,
  publisher = {Audio Engineering Society},
  url = {https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=20391}
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - Perceptual Evaluation of Bitrate Compressed Ambisonic Scenes in Loudspeaker Based Reproduction
AU  - Rudzki, Tomasz
AU  - Gomez-Lanzaco, Ignacio
AU  - Hening, Pierce
AU  - Skoglund, Jan
AU  - McKenzie, Thomas
AU  - Stubbs, Jessica
AU  - Murphy, Damian
AU  - Kearney, Gavin
T2  - AES Conference: 2019 AES International Conference on Immersive and Interactive Audio
M1  - Paper 100
PY  - 2019
DA  - 2019/03/06
UR  - https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=20391
PB  - Audio Engineering Society
LA  - en
AB  - The increasing popularity of Ambisonics as a spatial audio format for streaming services poses new challenges to the existing audio coding techniques. This paper seeks to evaluate timbral distortion and localization accuracy of Ambisonic audio encoded using Opus low-bitrate compression. The study was conducted for first, third and fifth order Ambisonic signals at various bitrates reproduced over a 50-channel spherical loudspeaker configuration. This study has identified how lower bitrates reduce timbral fidelity, though this changes depending on the audio content. Localization accuracy has been found to be relatively robust even at very low bitrates. The results suggest that the user experience of spatial audio streaming services would significantly improve if third order Ambisonics would be implemented over first order.
ER  -