Directional emphasis in ambisonics

TL;DR

This paper introduces a low-cost ambisonics enhancement technique that emphasizes signals from specific directions and improves directionality and timbre accuracy in low-degree representations, applicable in static and adaptive setups.

Contribution

It presents a novel, computationally efficient directional emphasis operator for ambisonics that enhances signal strength and reduces distortion in low-degree representations.

Findings

Effective directional emphasis achieved with low computational cost

Method improves sharpness of directionality in ambisonics

Applicable to both static and adaptive ambisonics setups

Abstract

We describe an ambisonics enhancement method that increases the signal strength in specified directions at low computational cost. The method can be used in a static setup to emphasize the signal arriving from a particular direction or set of directions. It can also be used in an adaptive arrangement where it sharpens directionality and reduces the distortion in timbre associated with low-degree ambisonics representations. The emphasis operator has very low computational complexity and can be applied to time-domain as well as time-frequency ambisonics representations. The operator upscales a low-degree ambisonics representation to a higher degree representation.