Perceptual Quality Enhancement of Sound Field Synthesis Based on Combination of Pressure and Amplitude Matching

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel sound field synthesis method that combines pressure and amplitude matching to reduce high-frequency artifacts and improve perceptual audio quality in spatial sound reproduction.

Contribution

The proposed method integrates amplitude matching with pressure matching to enhance perceptual quality by minimizing spatial aliasing artifacts in sound field synthesis.

Findings

Improved perceptual quality over traditional pressure matching.

Effective reduction of high-frequency spatial aliasing artifacts.

Validated through numerical simulations and listening tests.

Abstract

A sound field synthesis method enhancing perceptual quality is proposed. Sound field synthesis using multiple loudspeakers enables spatial audio reproduction with a broad listening area; however, synthesis errors at high frequencies called spatial aliasing artifacts are unavoidable. To minimize these artifacts, we propose a method based on the combination of pressure and amplitude matching. On the basis of the human's auditory properties, synthesizing the amplitude distribution will be sufficient for horizontal sound localization. Furthermore, a flat amplitude response should be synthesized as much as possible to avoid coloration. Therefore, we apply amplitude matching, which is a method to synthesize the desired amplitude distribution with arbitrary phase distribution, for high frequencies and conventional pressure matching for low frequencies. Experimental results of numerical simulations and listening tests using a practical system indicated that the perceptual quality of the sound field synthesized by the proposed method was improved from that synthesized by pressure matching.