Dynamic gain control of the center channel for increasing the spaciousness

Playing back stereo sources in the multichannel sound systems may lead to the leak of spaciousness due to the sticky center channel formed by the static matrix. Especially this is noticeable in the high-quality car audio systems, where the cabin is a very small listening room. Removing center channel, the staging suffers. The paper describes the algorithm “Center Driver” which controls center channel dynamically depending on the analysis results of the stereo source. The basic principle is: the more stereophonic is the piece of source, the more is the damping of the center. As shown, this principle creates the perception of the stage with keeping the spaciousness as recorded. The algorithm was tested in multichannel car audio system.