Sinusoidal spatial audio coding for low-bitrate binaural reproduction

A binaural audio synthesis system based on sinusoidal modeling is proposed for spatial, low-bitrate audio coding utilized for example in teleconference applications. The system transmits monaural sinusoidal parameters of a downmix signal, from which the left and right binaural signals are synthesized according to the directional metadata at the receiver. Typical sinusoidal synthesis methods, as well as the effectiveness of a monaural frequency masking model, are evaluated in binaural context. Furthermore, a method for binaural noise residual synthesis and efficiency improvements for HRTF parameter acquisition are suggested. Tests utilizing speech signals indicate that sinusoidal modeling is an attractive technique for applications such as the proposed one.