Binaural rendering technology over loudspeakers and headphones

Abstract

To provide listeners with an immersive listening experience, binaural rendering technology has become an important research topic, especially with the rising prominence of virtual/augmented reality in recent years. In this paper, we introduce our recent works on binaural rendering technology over headphones and loudspeakers. The first work is on crosstalk cancellation (CTC), which is critical for loudspeaker-based binaural rendering. An improved free-field CTC method is first presented, in which the head effects are formulated using an attenuation factor and a phase difference factor. A stochastic robust approximation method is then suggested to further improve its robustness against the perturbation perception caused by the listener's head movement or rotation. The second work is on elevation perception of sound images, which is critical for headphone- and loudspeaker-based binaural rendering methods. By analyzing the elevation-dependent head-related transfer function (HRTF), a parametric elevation control approach is presented in which the key perceptual cues (i.e., spectral peaks and notches) are modeled using digital filters and controlled according to learned rules. The effectiveness and performance of the suggested algorithms are verified by subjective and objective experiments.