Perceptual Reproduction of Spatial Sound Using Loudspeaker-Signal-Domain Parametrization

Adaptive perceptual spatial sound reproduction techniques that employ a parametric model describing the properties of the sound field can reproduce spatial sound with high perceptual accuracy when compared to linear techniques. On the other hand, applying a sound-field model to control the reproduced sound may compromise the perceived quality of individual channels in cases where the model does not match the sound field. An alternative parametrization is proposed that estimates directly the perceptually relevant parameters for the target loudspeaker signals without modeling the sound field. At the synthesis stage, the loudspeaker signals with the target parametric properties are generated from the microphone signals with regularized least squares mixing and decorrelation. It is shown through listening experiments that the proposed method provides on average the overall perceived spatial sound reproduction quality of a state-of the-art parametric spatial sound reproduction technique, while solving the past shortcomings related to the perceived quality of the individual channels.