Interpolating the Directional Room Impulse Response for Dynamic Spatial Audio Reproduction

Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly important for exploring the real world, which has partially moved to virtual workplaces. In order to create immersive presence in a simulated scene for humans, VR needs to reproduce spatial audio that describes three-dimensional acoustic characteristics in the co...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied sciences 2022-02, Vol.12 (4), p.2061
Main Authors: Zhao, Jiahong, Zheng, Xiguang, Ritz, Christian, Jang, Daeyoung
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accuracy
Acoustics
Algorithms
Audio data
Bandwidths
Computer applications
Coronaviruses
Decomposition
Direction of arrival
directional RIR (DRIR)
DRIR interpolation
dynamic reproduction
Impulse response
Interpolation
Localization
Microphones
Perceptions
Reproduction
room impulse response (RIR)
Sound
spatial audio
Virtual reality
virtual reality (VR)
Workplaces
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Summary:Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly important for exploring the real world, which has partially moved to virtual workplaces. In order to create immersive presence in a simulated scene for humans, VR needs to reproduce spatial audio that describes three-dimensional acoustic characteristics in the counterpart physical environment. When the user moves, this reproduction should be dynamically updated, which provides practical challenges because the bandwidth for continuously transmitting audio and video scene data may be limited. This paper proposes an interpolation approach for dynamic spatial audio reproduction using acoustic characteristics of direction and reverberation at limited numbers of positions, which are represented using a first order Ambisonics encoding of the room impulse response (RIR), called the directional RIR (DRIR). We decompose two known DRIRs into reflection components, before interpolating early dominant components for DRIR synthesis and utilizing DRIR recordings for accuracy evaluation. Results indicate that the most accurate interpolation is obtained by the proposed method over two comparative approaches, particularly in a simulated small room where most direction of arrival estimation errors of early components are below five degrees. These findings suggest precise interpolated DRIRs with limited data using the proposed approach, which is vital for dynamic spatial audio reproduction for VR applications.
ISSN:2076-3417
2076-3417
DOI:10.3390/app12042061