AMBIQUAL: Towards a Quality Metric for Headphone Rendered Compressed Ambisonic Spatial Audio

Spatial audio is essential for creating a sense of immersion in virtual environments. Efficient encoding methods are required to deliver spatial audio over networks without compromising Quality of Service (QoS). Streaming service providers such as YouTube typically transcode content into various bit...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied sciences 2020-05, Vol.10 (9), p.3188
Main Authors: Narbutt, Miroslaw, Skoglund, Jan, Allen, Andrew, Chinen, Michael, Barry, Dan, Hines, Andrew
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accuracy
Algorithms
Ambisonics
audio coding
audio compression
Codec
Compression
Data compression
Engineering research
Evaluation
Headphones
Investigations
Listening
Localization
Methods
Observations
Opus codec
Quality
Quality assessment
Quality of service architectures
Sound engineering
spatial audio
Spatial discrimination
Speech
Streaming
Streaming media
Submerging
Virtual environments
Virtual reality
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Summary:Spatial audio is essential for creating a sense of immersion in virtual environments. Efficient encoding methods are required to deliver spatial audio over networks without compromising Quality of Service (QoS). Streaming service providers such as YouTube typically transcode content into various bit rates and need a perceptually relevant audio quality metric to monitor users’ perceived quality and spatial localization accuracy. The aim of the paper is two-fold. First, it is to investigate the effect of Opus codec compression on the quality of spatial audio as perceived by listeners using subjective listening tests. Secondly, it is to introduce AMBIQUAL, a full reference objective metric for spatial audio quality, which derives both listening quality and localization accuracy metrics directly from the B-format Ambisonic audio. We compare AMBIQUAL quality predictions with subjective quality assessments across a variety of audio samples which have been compressed using the Opus 1.2 codec at various bit rates. Listening quality and localization accuracy of first and third-order Ambisonics were evaluated. Several fixed and dynamic audio sources (single and multiple) were used to evaluate localization accuracy. Results show good correlation regarding listening quality and localization accuracy between objective quality scores using AMBIQUAL and subjective scores obtained during listening tests.
ISSN:2076-3417
2076-3417
DOI:10.3390/app10093188