Enhancing stereophonic teleconferencing with microphone arrays through sound field warping

It has been proven that spatial audio enhances the realism of sound for teleconferencing. Previously, solutions have been proposed for multiparty conferencing where each remote participant is assumed to have his/her own microphone, and for conferencing between two rooms where the microphones in one room are connected to the equal number of loudspeakers in the other room. Either approach has its limitations. Hence, we propose a new scheme to improve stereophonic conferencing experience through an innovative use of microphone arrays. Instead of operating in the default mode where a single channel is produced using spatial filtering, we propose to transmit all channels forming a collection of spatial samples of the sound field. Those samples are warped appropriately at the remote site, and are spatialized together with audio streams from other remote sites if any, to produce the perception of a virtual sound field. Real-world audio samples are provided to showcase the proposed technique. The informal listening test shows that majority of the users prefer the new experience.