Conference Paper
Using multiple ambisonic room impulse responses to increase the sensation of envelopment produced by a reverberation effect.
AES 2024 International Conference on Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality · Paper 10 · August 2024
Abstract
Spherical microphone arrays (SMAs) provide a sound field representation that is independent of the playback system, while having the practical advantage of being compact. However, they produce a limited sense of envelopment compared to spaced microphone array techniques. Previous studies suggest that the combination of recordings from two spaced-SMAs can influence the spatial impressions of a sound scene with the introduction of inter-channel time differences. This study explores reverberation effects generated using various combinations of Ambisonic Room Impulse Responses (ARIRs) measured at different positions in two rooms using a 7th-order SMA. These reverberation effects combined up to four different ARIRs and were compared to a single-ARIR reference by means of a listening test. Listeners evaluated the stimuli according to the Global quality and the Envelopment by reverberation over a 7.0.4 loudspeaker setup. Results showed that the combination of multiple ARIRs had a significant influence on the sense of envelopment. The scores were notably higher for stimuli that had the lowest inter-channel correlation between non-frontal and frontal channel signals. However, a significant increase in the sense of envelopment did not result in higher Global quality ratings.
