Isolation performance metrics for personal sound zone reproduction systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces two new metrics, IZI and IPI, for evaluating the effectiveness of personal sound zone systems, providing more general and scenario-specific assessments than previous metrics.

Contribution

The paper presents generalized isolation metrics, IZI and IPI, tailored for multichannel audio, enhancing evaluation of sound zone performance in various scenarios.

Findings

IZI and IPI are non-interchangeable and suited for different applications.

Simulations demonstrate the metrics' effectiveness in evaluating PSZ performance.

Metrics help assess robustness and rendering modes of PSZ systems.

Abstract

Two isolation performance metrics, Inter-Zone Isolation (IZI) and Inter-Program Isolation (IPI), are introduced for evaluating Personal Sound Zone (PSZ) systems. Compared to the commonly-used Acoustic Contrast metric, IZI and IPI are generalized for multichannel audio, and quantify the isolation of sound zones and of audio programs, respectively. The two metrics are shown to be generally non-interchangeable and suitable for different scenarios, such as generating dark zones (IZI) or minimizing audio-on-audio interference (IPI). Furthermore, two examples with free-field simulations are presented and demonstrate the applications of IZI and IPI in evaluating PSZ performance in different rendering modes and PSZ robustness.