Extracting sound-source-distance information from binaural signals

Abstract

The problem of distance estimation by computational methods utilizing binaural information is discussed. Initially, a brief overview is given concerning findings related to the auditory distance perception. Then, several acoustical parameters that depend on the distance between the source and the receiver especially within reverberant rooms are presented. An overview of several existing distance estimation techniques using binaural signals is given and a recent distance estimation method is presented in more detail. This method relies on several statistical features extracted from binaural signals and incorporates all the above features into a classification framework based on Gaussian Mixture models.