Spatial audio coding with spaced microphone arrays for music recording and reproduction.

Abstract

Spaced microphone arrays are commonly used in multichannel recording of music, due to their inherent quality of natural incoherence between the surround channels at reproduction, at the expense of accurate localization. Recent methods in parametric spatial audio coding, such as Directional Audio Coding, exploit coincident microphone patterns to extract directional information and reproduce it in a perceptually optimal way. In this study we present how Directional Audio Coding can be adapted for spaced arrays, offering improved localization cues at reproduction, without compromising the qualities of the spaced microphone recording techniques. Examples are presented for some well-established array configurations. © 2013 Acoustical Society of America.