Resynthesis of Spatial Room Impulse Response Tails With Anisotropic Multi-Slope Decays

Hold C, Mckenzie T, Götz G, Schlecht SJ, Pulkki V. Resynthesis of Spatial Room Impulse Response Tails With Anisotropic Multi-Slope Decays. J Audio Eng Soc. 2022;70(6):526-538. doi:10.17743/jaes.2022.0017

@article{Hold2022_21800,
  author = {Hold, Christoph and Mckenzie, Thomas and Götz, Georg and Schlecht, Sebastian J. and Pulkki, Ville},
  title = {{Resynthesis of Spatial Room Impulse Response Tails With Anisotropic Multi-Slope Decays}},
  journal = {Journal of the Audio Engineering Society},
  volume = {70},
  number = {6},
  pages = {526--538},
  year = {2022},
  month = jun,
  publisher = {Audio Engineering Society},
  doi = {10.17743/jaes.2022.0017},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.17743/jaes.2022.0017}
}

TY  - JOUR
TI  - Resynthesis of Spatial Room Impulse Response Tails With Anisotropic Multi-Slope Decays
AU  - Hold, Christoph
AU  - Mckenzie, Thomas
AU  - Götz, Georg
AU  - Schlecht, Sebastian J.
AU  - Pulkki, Ville
T2  - Journal of the Audio Engineering Society
J2  - J. Audio Eng. Soc.
VL  - 70
IS  - 6
SP  - 526
EP  - 538
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/06/06
DO  - 10.17743/jaes.2022.0017
UR  - https://doi.org/10.17743/jaes.2022.0017
PB  - Audio Engineering Society
LA  - en
AB  - Spatial room impulse responses (SRIRs) capture room acoustics with directional information. SRIRs measured in coupled rooms and spaces with non-uniform absorption distribution may exhibit anisotropic reverberation decays and multiple decay slopes. However, noisy measurements with low signal-to-noise ratios pose issues in analysis and reproduction in practice. This paper presents a method for resynthesis of the late decay of anisotropic SRIRs, effectively removing noise from SRIR measurements. The method accounts for both multi-slope decays and directional reverberation. A spherical filter bank extracts directionally constrained signals from Ambisonic input, which are then analyzed and parameterized in terms of multiple exponential decays and a noise floor. The noisy late reverberation is then resynthesized from the estimated parameters using modal synthesis, and the restored SRIR is reconstructed as Ambisonic signals. The method is evaluated both numerically and perceptually, which shows that SRIRs can be denoised with minimal error as long as parts of the decay slope are above the noise level, with signal-to-noise ratios as low as 40 dB in the presented experiment. The method can be used to increase the perceived spatial audio quality of noise-impaired SRIRs.
ER  -