Analysis by synthesis spatial audio coding

Abstract

This study presents a novel spatial audio coding (SAC) technique, called analysis by synthesis SAC (AbS-SAC), with a capability of minimising signal distortion introduced during the encoding processes. The reverse one-to-two (R-OTT), a module applied in the MPEG Surround to down-mix two channels as a single channel, is first configured as a closed-loop system. This closed-loop module offers a capability to reduce the quantisation errors of the spatial parameters, leading to an improved quality of the synthesised audio signals. Moreover, a sub-optimal AbS optimisation, based on the closed-loop R-OTT module, is proposed. This algorithm addresses a problem of practicality in implementing an optimal AbS optimisation while it is still capable of improving further the quality of the reconstructed audio signals. In terms of algorithm complexity, the proposed sub-optimal algorithm provides scalability. The results of objective and subjective tests are presented. It is shown that significant improvement of the objective performance, when compared to the conventional open-loop approach, is achieved. On the other hand, subjective test show that the proposed technique achieves higher subjective difference grade scores than the tested advanced audio coding multichannel. © The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2014.