Quality assessment of multi-channel audio processing schemes based on a binaural auditory model

A perceptual, binaural audio-quality model is introduced. The model was developed for predicting any kinds of perceived spatial quality differences between two audio signals in multi-channel reproduction and audio processing schemes. It employs a recent binaural auditory model as front-end to provide perceptually relevant binaural features for the reference and test audio signal. Correlations between the binaural features of both signals are combined to an overall spatial quality measure by the use of multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS). Furthermore, a database was generated to train and evaluate the model. The database contains various multi-channel audio signals, which were subjectively assessed in formal listening tests with 15 trained listeners. The results show different model prediction performances depending on the type of quality degradation. Combination of the proposed spatial quality measure with established monaural quality measures improved the predictive power.