Sector-Based Parametric Sound Field Reproduction in the Spherical Harmonic Domain

This papers presents a parametric method for perceptual sound field recording and reproduction from a small-sized microphone array to arbitrary loudspeaker layouts. The applied parametric model has been found to be effective and well-correlated with perceptual attributes in the context of directional audio coding, and here it is generalized and extended to higher orders of spherical harmonic signals. Higher order recordings are used for estimation of the model parameters inside angular sectors that provide increased separation between simultaneous sources and reverberation. The perceptual synthesis according to the combined properties of these sector parameters is achieved with an adaptive least-squares mixing technique. Furthermore, considerations regarding practical microphone arrays are presented and a frequency-dependent scheme is proposed. A realization of the system is described for an existing spherical microphone array and for a target loudspeaker setup similar to NHK 22.2. It is demonstrated through listening tests that, compared to a reference scene, the perceived difference is greatly reduced with the proposed higher order analysis model. The results further indicate that, on the same task, the method outperforms linear reproduction with the same recordings available.