Methods and equipment for decompressing compressed high-order ambisonic signals and means of computer-readable invariant signals.

Abstract

The invention relates to a method and apparatus for decompressing compressed higher-order ambisonics (HOA) signals. Higher-order ambisonics (HOA) signals represent the complete sound field in the vicinity of the sharp point, independent of the loudspeaker settings. High spatial resolution requires a large number of HOA coefficients. According to the invention, the principal sound directions are estimated and the HOA signal representation is analyzed into principal directional signals in the time domain and associated directional information, and an ambient component in the HOA domain, followed by compression of the ambient component by reducing its order. The reduced-order ambient component is transformed to the spatial domain and is perceptually encoded along with the directional signals.At the receiver side, the encoded directional signals and their reduced-order encoded surrounding components are sensoryally decompressed. The sensoryally decompressed surrounding signals are transformed into a reduced-order HOA signal domain representation, which is then scaled up. The overall HOA signal representation is then reconstructed from the original directional signals, corresponding directional information, and surrounding HOA components.

Description

[0001] Method and Apparatus for compressing and decompressing a Higher Order Ambisonics signal representation

[0002] The invention relates to a method and to an apparatus for compressing and decompressing a Higher Order Ambisonics signal representation, wherein directional and ambient compo¬nents are processed in a different manner.

[0003] Background

[0004] Higher Order Ambisonics (HOA) offers the advantage of cap¬turing a complete sound field in the vicinity of a specific location in the three dimensional space, which location is called 'sweet spot'. Such HOA representation is independent of a specific loudspeaker set-up, in contrast to channel- based techniques like stereo or surround. But this flexibil¬ity is at the expense of a decoding process required for playback of the HOA representation on a particular loud- speaker set-up.

[0005] HOA is based on the description of the complex amplitudes of the air pressure for individual angular wave numbers k for positions x in the vicinity of a desired listener position, which without loss of generality may be assumed to be the origin of a spherical coordinate system, using a truncated Spherical Harmonics (SH) expansion. The spatial resolution of this representation improves with a growing maximum order N of the expansion. Unfortunately, the number of expansion coefficients 0 grows quadratically with the order N, i.e. 0 = (N + l)2. For example, typical HOA representations using order N = 4 require 0 = 25 HOA coefficients. Given a desired sampling rate f$and the number of bits per sample, the total bit rate for the transmission of an HOA signal repre¬sentation is determined by -fs-N^rand transmission of anHOA signal representation of order N = 4 with a sampling rate of fs=48kHz employing N^ = 16 bits per sample is resulting in a bit rate of 19.2 MBits / s. Thus, compression of HOA signal representations is highly desirable.

[0006] An overview of existing spatial audio compression approaches can be found in patent application EP 10306472.1 or in I. Elfitri, B. Giinel, A.M. Kondoz, "Multichannel Audio Coding Based on Analysis by Synthesis", Proceedings of the IEEE, vol.99, no.4, pp.657-670, April 2011.

[0007] The following techniques are more relevant with respect to the invention.

[0008] B-format signals, which are equivalent to Ambisonics repre¬sentations of first order, can be compressed using Direc¬tional Audio Coding (DirAC) as described in V. Pulkki, "Spa- tial Sound Reproduction with Directional Audio Coding",

[0009] Journal of Audio Eng. Society, vol.55 (6), pp.503-516, 2007. In one version proposed for teleconference applications, the B-format signal is coded into a single omni-directional sig¬nal as well as side information in the form of a single di- rection and a diffuseness parameter per frequency band. How¬ever, the resulting drastic reduction of the data rate comes at the price of a minor signal quality obtained at reproduc¬tion. Further, DirAC is limited to the compression of Ambi¬sonics representations of first order, which suffer from a very low spatial resolution.

[0010] The known methods for compression of HOA representations with N>1 are quite rare. One of them performs direct encod¬ing of individual HOA coefficient sequences employing the perceptual Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) codec, c.f. E.

[0011] Hellerud, I. Burnett, A. Solvang, U. Peter Svensson, "Encod¬ing Higher Order Ambisonics with AAC", 124th AES Convention, Amsterdam, 2008. However, the inherent problem with such approach is the perceptual coding of signals that are never listened to. The reconstructed playback signals are usuallyobtained by a weighted sum of the HOA coefficient sequences. That is why there is a high probability for the unmasking of perceptual coding noise when the decompressed HOA represen¬tation is rendered on a particular loudspeaker set-up. In more technical terms, the major problem for perceptual cod¬ing noise unmasking is the high cross-correlations between the individual HOA coefficients sequences. Because the coded noise signals in the individual HOA coefficient sequences are usually uncorrelated with each other, there may occur a constructive superposition of the perceptual coding noise while at the same time the noise-free HOA coefficient se¬quences are cancelled at superposition. A further problem is that the mentioned cross correlations lead to a reduced ef¬ficiency of the perceptual coders.

[0012] In order to minimise the extent these effects, it is pro¬posed in EP 10306472.1 to transform the HOA representation to an equivalent representation in the spatial domain before perceptual coding. The spatial domain signals correspond to conventional directional signals, and would correspond to the loudspeaker signals if the loudspeakers were positioned in exactly the same directions as those assumed for the spa¬tial domain transform.

[0013] The transform to spatial domain reduces the cross-corre¬lations between the individual spatial domain signals. How- ever, the cross-correlations are not completely eliminated. An example for relatively high cross-correlations is a di¬rectional signal, whose direction falls in-between the adja¬cent directions covered by the spatial domain signals.

[0014] A further disadvantage of EP 10306472.1 and the above- mentioned Hellerud et al . article is that the number of per¬ceptually coded signals is (N + l)2, where N is the order of the HOA representation. Therefore the data rate for the com¬pressed HOA representation is growing quadratically with the Ambisonics order.The inventive compression processing performs a decomposi¬tion of an HOA sound field representation into a directional component and an ambient component. In particular for the computation of the directional sound field component a new processing is described below for the estimation of several dominant sound directions.

[0015] Regarding existing methods for direction estimation based on Ambisonics, the above-mentioned Pulkki article describes one method in connection with DirAC coding for the estimation of the direction, based on the B-format sound field representa¬tion. The direction is obtained from the average intensity vector, which points to the direction of flow of the sound field energy. An alternative based on the B-format is pro- posed in D. Levin, S. Gannot, E.A.P. Habets, "Direction-of- Arrival Estimation using Acoustic Vector Sensors in the Presence of Noise", IEEE Proc. of the ICASSP, pp.105-108, 2011. The direction estimation is performed iteratively by searching for that direction which provides the maximum pow- er of a beam former output signal steered into that direc¬tion.

[0016] However, both approaches are constrained to the B-format for the direction estimation, which suffers from a relatively low spatial resolution. An additional disadvantage is that the estimation is restricted to only a single dominant di¬rection .

[0017] HOA representations offer an improved spatial resolution and thus allow an improved estimation of several dominant direc¬tions. The existing methods performing an estimation of several directions based on HOA sound field representations are quite rare. An approach based on compressive sensing is pro¬posed in N. Epain, C. Jin, A. van Schaik, "The Application of Compressive Sampling to the Analysis and Synthesis ofSpatial Sound Fields", 127th Convention of the Audio Eng. Soc, New York, 2009, and in A. Wabnitz, N. Epain, A. van Schaik, C Jin, "Time Domain Reconstruction of Spatial Sound Fields Using Compressed Sensing", IEEE Proc. of the ICASSP, pp.465-468, 2011. The main idea is to assume the sound field to be spatially sparse, i.e. to consist of only a small num¬ber of directional signals. Following allocation of a high number of test directions on the sphere, an optimisation al¬gorithm is employed in order to find as few test directions as possible together with the corresponding directional sig¬nals, such that they are well described by the given HOA representation. This method provides an improved spatial resolution compared to that which is actually provided by the given HOA representation, since it circumvents the spa- tial dispersion resulting from a limited order of the given HOA representation. However, the performance of the algorithm heavily depends on whether the sparsity assumption is satisfied. In particular, the approach fails if the sound field contains any minor additional ambient components, or if the HOA representation is affected by noise which will occur when it is computed from multi-channel recordings.

[0018] A further, rather intuitive method is to transform the given HOA representation to the spatial domain as described in B. Rafaely, "Plane-wave decomposition of the sound field on a sphere by spherical convolution", J. Acoust. Soc. Am., vol.4, no.116, pp .2149-2157 , October 2004, and then to search for maxima in the directional powers. The disad¬vantage of this approach is that the presence of ambient components leads to a blurring of the directional power dis¬tribution and to a displacement of the maxima of the direc¬tional powers compared to the absence of any ambient compo¬nent .Invention

[0019] A problem to be solved by the invention is to provide a com¬pression for HOA signals whereby the high spatial resolution of the HOA signal representation is still kept. This problem is solved by the methods disclosed in claims 1 and 2. Appa¬ratuses that utilise these methods are disclosed in claims 3 and 4. The invention addresses the compression of Higher Order Am- bisonics HOA representations of sound fields. In this appli¬cation, the term 'HOA' denotes the Higher Order Ambisonics representation as such as well as a correspondingly encoded or represented audio signal. Dominant sound directions are estimated and the HOA signal representation is decomposed into a number of dominant directional signals in time domain and related direction information, and an ambient component in HOA domain, followed by compression of the ambient compo¬nent by reducing its order. After that decomposition, the ambient HOA component of reduced order is transformed to the spatial domain, and is perceptually coded together with the directional signals.

[0020] At receiver or decoder side, the encoded directional signals and the order-reduced encoded ambient component are percep- tually decompressed. The perceptually decompressed ambient signals are transformed to an HOA domain representation of reduced order, followed by order extension. The total HOA representation is re-composed from the directional signals and the corresponding direction information and from the original-order ambient HOA component.

[0021] Advantageously, the ambient sound field component can be represented with sufficient accuracy by an HOA representa¬tion having a lower than original order, and the extraction of the dominant directional signals ensures that, followingcompression and decompression, a high spatial resolution is still achieved.

[0022] In principle, the inventive method is suited for compressing a Higher Order Ambisonics HOA signal representation, said method including the steps:

[0023] estimating dominant directions, wherein said dominant di¬rection estimation is dependent on a directional power dis¬tribution of the energetically dominant HOA components;

[0024] - decomposing or decoding the HOA signal representation into a number of dominant directional signals in time domain and related direction information, and a residual ambient component in HOA domain, wherein said residual ambient com¬ponent represents the difference between said HOA signal representation and a representation of said dominant directional signals;

[0025] compressing said residual ambient component by reducing its order as compared to its original order;

[0026] transforming said residual ambient HOA component of re- duced order to the spatial domain;

[0027] perceptually encoding said dominant directional signals and said transformed residual ambient HOA component.

[0028] In principle, the inventive method is suited for decompress- ing a Higher Order Ambisonics HOA signal representation that was compressed by the steps:

[0029] estimating dominant directions, wherein said dominant di¬rection estimation is dependent on a directional power dis¬tribution of the energetically dominant HOA components;

[0030] - decomposing or decoding the HOA signal representation into a number of dominant directional signals in time domain and related direction information, and a residual ambient component in HOA domain, wherein said residual ambient com¬ponent represents the difference between said HOA signalrepresentation and a representation of said dominant directional signals;

[0031] compressing said residual ambient component by reducing its order as compared to its original order;

[0032] - transforming said residual ambient HOA component of re¬duced order to the spatial domain;

[0033] perceptually encoding said dominant directional signals and said transformed residual ambient HOA component, said method including the steps:

[0034] - perceptually decoding said perceptually encoded dominant directional signals and said perceptually encoded trans¬formed residual ambient HOA component;

[0035] inverse transforming said perceptually decoded trans¬formed residual ambient HOA component so as to get an HOA domain representation;

[0036] performing an order extension of said inverse transformed residual ambient HOA component so as to establish an origi¬nal-order ambient HOA component;

[0037] composing said perceptually decoded dominant directional signals, said direction information and said original-order extended ambient HOA component so as to get an HOA signal representation .

[0038] In principle the inventive apparatus is suited for compress- ing a Higher Order Ambisonics HOA signal representation, said apparatus including:

[0039] means being adapted for estimating dominant directions, wherein said dominant direction estimation is dependent on a directional power distribution of the energetically dominant HOA components;

[0040] means being adapted for decomposing or decoding the HOA signal representation into a number of dominant directional signals in time domain and related direction information, and a residual ambient component in HOA domain, wherein saidresidual ambient component represents the difference between said HOA signal representation and a representation of said dominant directional signals;

[0041] means being adapted for compressing said residual ambient component by reducing its order as compared to its original order;

[0042] means being adapted for transforming said residual ambi¬ent HOA component of reduced order to the spatial domain; means being adapted for perceptually encoding said domi- nant directional signals and said transformed residual ambi¬ent HOA component .

[0043] In principle the inventive apparatus is suited for decom¬pressing a Higher Order Ambisonics HOA signal representation that was compressed by the steps:

[0044] estimating dominant directions, wherein said dominant di¬rection estimation is dependent on a directional power dis¬tribution of the energetically dominant HOA components;

[0045] decomposing or decoding the HOA signal representation in- to a number of dominant directional signals in time domain and related direction information, and a residual ambient component in HOA domain, wherein said residual ambient com¬ponent represents the difference between said HOA signal representation and a representation of said dominant direc- tional signals;

[0046] compressing said residual ambient component by reducing its order as compared to its original order;

[0047] transforming said residual ambient HOA component of re¬duced order to the spatial domain;

[0048] - perceptually encoding said dominant directional signals and said transformed residual ambient HOA component, said apparatus including:

[0049] means being adapted for perceptually decoding said per¬ceptually encoded dominant directional signals and said per-ceptually encoded transformed residual ambient HOA compo¬nent ;

[0050] means being adapted for inverse transforming said percep¬tually decoded transformed residual ambient HOA component so as to get an HOA domain representation;

[0051] means being adapted for performing an order extension of said inverse transformed residual ambient HOA component so as to establish an original-order ambient HOA component; means being adapted for composing said perceptually de- coded dominant directional signals, said direction infor¬mation and said original-order extended ambient HOA compo¬nent so as to get an HOA signal representation.

[0052] Advantageous additional embodiments of the invention are disclosed in the respective dependent claims.

[0053] Drawings Exemplary embodiments of the invention are described with reference to the accompanying drawings, which show in:

[0054] Fig. 1 Normalised dispersion function νΝ(Θ) for different

[0055] Ambisonics orders N and for angles Θε[0,π];

[0056] Fig. 2 block diagram of the compression processing accord- ing to the invention;

[0057] Fig. 3 block diagram of the decompression processing according to the invention.

[0058] Exemplary embodiments

[0059] Ambisonics signals describe sound fields within source-free areas using Spherical Harmonics (SH) expansion. The feasi¬bility of this description can be attributed to the physicalproperty that the temporal and spatial behaviour of the sound pressure is essentially determined by the wave equa¬tion. Wave equation and Spherical Harmonics expansion

[0060] For a more detailed description of Ambisonics, in the fol¬lowing a spherical coordinate system is assumed, where a point in spaceis represented by a radius r> 0

[0061] (i.e. the distance to the coordinate origin), an inclination angle Θ E [Ο,π] measured from the polar axis z, and an azimuth angle φ £ [0,2π[ measured in the x=y plane from the x axis. In this spherical coordinate system the wave equation for the sound pressure p(t, x) within a connected source-free area, where t denotes time, is given by the textbook of Earl G. Williams, "Fourier Acoustics", vol.93 of Applied Mathemati¬cal Sciences, Academic Press, 1999:

[0062] 1 Γ d f 2 dp(t,x)\ 1 d f dp(t,x)\ 1 a2p(t,x)1 1 d2p(t,x)=

[0063] r2Vdr V dr ) sin0 δθ V δθ ) sin20 ΰφ2J cs2dt2

[0064] with csindicating the speed of sound. As a consequence, the Fourier transform of the sound pressure with respect to time

[0065] Ρ(ω, χ) : = ^{ρ(ί, χ)} (2)

[0066] : = / _∞∞p(t, x)e-iwtdt , (3) where i denotes the imaginary unit, may be expanded into the series of SH according to the Williams textbook:

[0067] P(fccs,(r,0, )r) =∑n=o∑m=-n ^(fcr)¾n(^ ) · (4) It should be noted that this expansion is valid for all points x within a connected source-free area, which corre¬sponds to the region of convergence of the series.

[0068] In eq. (4), k denotes the angular wave number defined by

[0069] k: = (5) and ^(fcr) indicates the SH expansion coefficients, which depend only on the product kr .

[0070] Further, Υ™(θ,φ) are the SH functions of order n and degree

[0071] where P^Ccos^) denote the associated Legendre functions and (·)! indicates the factorial.

[0072] The associated Legendre functions for non-negative degree indices m are defined through the Legendre polynomials Pn( ) by P™(x): = (-l)m(l-2)

[0073] for m≥0 . (7)

[0074] For negative degree indices, i.e. m < 0, the associated Le¬gendre functions are defined by

[0075] P^(x := (-lm^^p-m(x for m<0 . (8) The Legendre polynomials Pn(x) (n≥ 0) in turn can be defined using the Rodrigues ' Formula as

[0076] ^M =~^ - vr ·(9>

[0077] In the prior art, e.g. in M. Poletti, "Unified Description of Ambisonics using Real and Complex Spherical Harmonics", Proceedings of the Ambisonics Symposium 2009, 25-27 June

[0078] 2009, Graz, Austria, there also exist definitions of the SH functions which deviate from that in eq. (6) by a factor of (—l)mfor negative degree indices m .

[0079] Alternatively, the Fourier transform of the sound pressure with respect to time can be expressed using real SH func¬tions 5^(0,0) as

[0080] P(kcs,(r,9^T=∑^=0∑^=_nq^(krS^(9^ . (10) In literature, there exist various definitions of the real SH functions (see e.g. the above-mentioned Poletti article). One possible definition, which is applied throughout this document, is given bywhere (·)*denotes complex conjugation. An alternative expres sion is obtained by inserting eq. (6) into eq. (11) :

[0081] with

[0082] Although the real SH functions are real-valued per defini¬tion, this does not hold for the corresponding expansion coefficients q™(kr) in general.

[0083] The complex SH functions are related to the real SH func¬tions as follo

[0085] The complex SH functions Υ™(θ,φ) as well as the real SH func¬tions S ( , ) with the direction vector Ω: = (0, 0)τform an or- thonormal basis for squared integrable complex valued func¬tions on the unit sphere S2in the three-dimensional space, and thus obey the conditions

[0086] js277(Ω)^'*(Ω)άΩ = / r7( , ' , )sin d d

[0088] fg25 (Ω)5 '(Ω)άΩ = 5n_n,5m_m, (16) where 5 denotes the Kronecker delta function. The second re¬sult can be derived using eq. (15) and the definition of the real spherical harmonics in eq. (11) .

[0089] Interior problem and Ambisonics coefficients

[0090] The purpose of Ambisonics is a representation of a sound field in the vicinity of the coordinate origin. Without loss of generality, this region of interest is here assumed to be a ball of radius R centred in the coordinate origin, which is specified by the set {x\0<r<R}. A crucial assumption for the representation is that this ball is supposed to not con-tain any sound sources. Finding the representation of the sound field within this ball is termed the 'interior prob¬lem', cf. the above-mentioned Williams textbook.

[0091] It can be shown that for the interior problem the SH functions expansion coefficients p ( / cr) can be expressed as

[0092] (17) where jn{.) denote the spherical Bessel functions of first or¬der. From eq. (17) it follows that the complete information about the sound field is contained in the coefficients a ( / c), which are referred to as Ambisonics coefficients.

[0093] Similarly, the coefficients of the real SH functions expan¬sion q™(kr) can be factorised as

[0094] q (kr) = b (k)jn(kr) , (18) where the coefficients b™(k) are referred to as Ambisonics coefficients with respect to the expansion using real-valued SH functions. They are related to a ( / c) through

[0095] ^m(fc) - (-Dm-m(¾)] for m<0

[0096] Plane wave decomposition

[0097] The sound field within a sound source-free ball centred in the coordinate origin can be expressed by a superposition of an infinite number of plane waves of different angular wave numbers k, impinging on the ball from all possible direc¬tions, cf. the above-mentioned Rafaely "Plane-wave decompo- sition ..." article. Assuming that the complex amplitude of a plane wave with angular wave number k from the direction Ω0is given by D( / c,ft0), it can be shown in a similar way by using eq. (11) and eq. (19) that the corresponding Ambisonics coefficients with respect to the real SH functions expansion are given by

[0098] ¾ane wave «o) = 4ττ inD k, ilQ)S™(Ω0) . (20)Consequently, the Ambisonics coefficients for the sound field resulting from a superposition of an infinite number of plane waves of angular wave number k are obtained from an integration of eq. (20) over all possible directions Ω0E S2:

[0099] b™(k) = fs2¾anewave( / c;fto)dft0(21)

[0100] The function D( / c,ft) is termed 'amplitude density' and is as¬sumed to be square integrable on the unit sphere S2. It can be expanded into the series of real SH functions as

[0101] O(fc,n) =∑n=0∑m=-n (W(n) , (23) where the expansion coefficients c ( / c) are equal to the inte¬gral occurring in eq. (22) , i.e.

[0102] c™(k) = js2D(k,Cl)S™(Cl)dCl . (24) By inserting eq. (24) into eq. (22) it can be seen that the Ambisonics coefficients b™(k) are a scaled version of the ex¬pansion coefficients c ( / c), i.e.

[0103] b™(k) = 4mnc™(k) . (25) When applying the inverse Fourier transform with respect to time to the scaled Ambisonics coefficients c ( / c) and to the amplitude density function D(k,ti), the corresponding time domain quantities

[0104] (t) : = ΤΓ1(f) } = L" (f) e'^do) (26)

[0105] «Jft,0): = Γ1{O £.0)} = &D&a)*"fo (27) are obtained. Then, in the time domain, eq. (24) can be for- mulated as

[0107] The time domain directional signal d(t,ft)may be represented by a real SH function expansion according to

[0109] Using the fact that the SH functions 5 (Ω) are real-valued, its complex conjugate can be expressed by

[0110] Assuming the time domain signal d (t,ft)to be real-valued, i.e. d t, a) = d*t, a) , it follows from the comparison of eq. (29) with eq. (30) that the coefficients c™*(t) are real-valued in that case, i.e. c™(t) = c™*(t) .

[0111] The coefficients (t) will be referred to as scaled time do¬main Ambisonics coefficients in the following.

[0112] In the following it is also assumed that the sound field representation is given by these coefficients, which will be described in more detail in the below section dealing with the compression.

[0113] It is noted that the time domain HOA representation by the coefficients (t) used for the processing according to the invention is equivalent to a corresponding frequency domain HOA representation c ( / c) . Therefore the described compression and decompression can be equivalently realised in the fre¬quency domain with minor respective modifications of the equations .

[0114] Spatial resolution with finite order

[0115] In practice the sound field in the vicinity of the coordi¬nate origin is described using only a finite number of Ambi¬sonics coefficients c ( / c) of order n<N. Computing the amplitude density function from the truncated series of SH functions according to

[0116] DN(k, Ω): =∑^=o∑m=-n (fc)S™(Ω) (31) introduces a kind of spatial dispersion compared to the true amplitude density function D(k, Q ) , cf. the above-mentioned "Plane-wave decomposition ..." article. This can be realised by computing the amplitude density function for a single plane wave from the direction Ω0using eq. (31) :

[0117] DN(k, Ω) ( ) (32)

[0118] (33)D(k,il0)∑^=0∑^=_n¾**(Ω0)ϊ™(Ω) (34)

[0119] D ( / c'Ωο)Ldle-i) (cos0) - Pw(cos©))] (36) D(fc,no)¾(0) (3 ) with

[0120] where Θ denotes the angle between the two vectors pointing towards the directions Ω and Ω0satisfying the property

[0121] cos© = cos6>cos#o + cos(0—0o)sin6>sin6>o . (39) In eq. (34) the Ambisonics coefficients for a plane wave giv¬en in eq. (20) are employed, while in equations (35) and (36) some mathematical theorems are exploited, cf. the above- mentioned "Plane-wave decomposition ..." article. The prop¬erty in eq. (33) can be shown using eq. (14) .

[0122] Comparing eq. (37) to the true amplitude density function

[0123] D(k,ci) = D(fc,n0)≤r , (40) where 5(·) denotes the Dirac delta function, the spatial dis¬persion becomes obvious from the replacement of the scaled Dirac delta function by the dispersion function νΝ(Θ) which, after having been normalised by its maximum value, is illus¬trated in Fig. 1 for different Ambisonics orders N and an¬gles Θ £ [0,77:] .

[0124] Because the first zero of ¾(0) is located approximately at ^ for N>4 (see the above-mentioned "Plane-wave decomposition ..." article), the dispersion effect is reduced (and thus the spatial resolution is improved) with increasing Ambi¬sonics order N.

[0125] For N→∞ the dispersion function νΝ(Θ) converges to the scaled Dirac delta function. This can be seen if the com- pleteness relation for the Legendre polynomials

[0126] ∑∞=0-2Pn(x)Pn(χ') = δ(χ-χ') (41)is used together with eq. (35) to express the limit

[0127] ¾ (0) for N→ oo as

[0128] lim¾(0) = ^∑∞=0^ Pn(cos0)

[0129] N→∞ in Δ

[0131] =— 5(cos0 - l) (44) = ^ 5(0) .

[0132] 2π (45)

[0133] When defining the vector of real SH functions of order n < N by S(n) : = (S0° (Ω), Sf1(Ω),S?(SI),S½ (Ω), 52"2(Ω), ,¾Ν(Ω))Γ£ 1° , (46) where 0 = (N + l)2and where (.)Tdenotes transposition, the comparison of eq. (37) with eq. (33) shows that the dispersion function can be expressed through the scalar product of two real SH vectors as ¾ (0) = 5Τ(Ω)5(Ω0) . (47) The dispersion can be equivalently expressed in time domain as

[0134] dN(t, Ω) : =∑^=o ∑m=-n (t)5- (Ω) (48)

[0135] = ώ (ί, Ω0)¾ (Θ) . (49)

[0136] Sampling

[0137] For some applications it is desirable to determine the scaled time domain Ambisonics coefficients ^ (t) from the samples of the time domain amplitude density function ά(ΐ,Ω) at a finite number / of discrete directions ilj. The integral in eq. (28) is then approximated by a finite sum according to B. Rafaely, "Analysis and Design of Spherical Microphone Ar¬rays", IEEE Transactions on Speech and Audio Processing, vol.13, no.l, pp.135-143, January 2005:

[0138] c™(t)*∑Jj=1gj-d(t,Clj)S™(Clj) , (50) where the gjdenote some appropriately chosen sampling weights. In contrast to the "Analysis and Design ..." arti¬cle, approximation (50) refers to a time domain representa-tion using real SH functions rather than to a frequency do¬main representation using complex SH functions. A necessary condition for approximation (50) to become exact is that the amplitude density is of limited harmonic order N, meaning that c™(t) = 0 for n>N . (51) If this condition is not met, approximation (50) suffers from spatial aliasing errors, cf. B. Rafaely, "Spatial Ali¬asing in Spherical Microphone Arrays", IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, vol.55, no.3, pp .1003-1010 , March 2007. A second necessary condition requires the sampling points and the corresponding weights to fulfil the corresponding conditions given in the "Analysis and Design ..." article:

[0139] ∑1j=1gjS^'{0.j)S^{aj) = 5n_n,5m_m, form,m'≤N . (52)

[0140] The conditions (51) and (52) jointly are sufficient for ex- act sampling.

[0141] The sampling condition (52) consists of a set of linear equations, which can be formulated compactly using a single matrix equation as ΨϋΨΗ= I , (53) where Ψ indicates the mode matrix defined by

[0142] Ψ:=[5(Ω!) ... S(ft;)]£]R0x^ (54) and G denotes the matrix with the weights on its diagonal, i.e.

[0143] G: = diag(g1,,gJ) . (55) From eq. (53) it can be seen that a necessary condition for eq. (52) to hold is that the number / of sampling points ful¬fils J≥0. Collecting the values of the time domain amplitude density at th mpling points into the vector

[0144] and defining the vector of scaled time domain Ambisonics co- efficients by , (57)

[0145] both vectors are related through the SH functions expansion(29) . This relation provides the following system of linear equations: w(t) = ΨΗθ_ΐ) . (58) Using the introduced vector notation, the computation of the scaled time domain Ambisonics coefficients from the values of the time domain amplitude density function samples can be written as c(t) ~ M»Gw(t) . (59) Given a fixed Ambisonics order N, it is often not possible to compute a number / > 0 of sampling points and the cor¬responding weights such that the sampling condition eq. (52) holds. However, if the sampling points are chosen such that the sampling condition is well approximated, then the rank of the mode matrix Ψ is 0 and its condition number low. In this case, the pseudo-inverse Ψ+:= (ΨΨΗ)_1ΨΨ+(60) of the mode matrix Ψ exists and a reasonable approximation of the scaled time domain Ambisonics coefficient vector c(t) from the vector of the time domain amplitude density func¬tion samples is given by c(t) « *P+w(t) . (61) If / = 0 and the rank of the mode matrix is 0, then its pseu¬do-inverse coincides with its inverse since

[0146] ψ+=(ψψΗ) Ιψ=ψ-Ηψ-Ιψ=ψ-Η(62)

[0147] If additionally the sampling condition eq. (52) is satisfied, then ΨΗ= (63) holds and both approximations (59) and (61) are equivalent and exact .

[0148] Vector w(t) can be interpreted as a vector of spatial time domain signals. The transform from the HOA domain to the spatial domain can be performed e.g. by using eq. (58) . This kind of transform is termed 'Spherical Harmonic Transform' (SHT) in this application and is used when the ambient HOA component of reduced order is transformed to the spatial do¬main. It is implicitly assumed that the spatial sampling points Ω)for the SHT approximately satisfy the sampling

[0149] 4

[0150] condition in eq. (52) with for ] = !,...,J and that / = 0.Under these assumptions the SHT matrix satisfies ψΗ« ^ ψ_1. In case the absolute scaling for the SHT not being im-

[0151] 4TI

[0152] portant, the constant — can be neglected. Compression

[0153] This invention is related to the compression of a given HOA signal representation. As mentioned above, the HOA representation is decomposed into a predefined number of dominant directional signals in the time domain and an ambient compo- nent in HOA domain, followed by compression of the HOA representation of the ambient component by reducing its order. This operation exploits the assumption, which is supported by listening tests, that the ambient sound field component can be represented with sufficient accuracy by a HOA repre- sentation with a low order. The extraction of the dominant directional signals ensures that, following that compression and a corresponding decompression, a high spatial resolution is retained.

[0154] After the decomposition, the ambient HOA component of re- duced order is transformed to the spatial domain, and is perceptually coded together with the directional signals as described in section Exemplary embodiments of patent appli¬cation EP 10306472.1. The compression processing includes two successive steps, which are depicted in Fig. 2. The exact definitions of the individual signals are described in below section Details of the compression.

[0155] In the first step or stage shown in Fig. 2a, in a dominant direction estimator 22 dominant directions are estimated and a decomposition of the Ambisonics signal C(V) into a direc¬tional and a residual or ambient component is performed, where I denotes the frame index. The directional component iscalculated in a directional signal computation step or stage 23, whereby the Ambisonics representation is converted to time domain signals represented by a set of D conventional directional signals X(l) with corresponding directions

[0156] ΩΟΟΜ( · The residual ambient component is calculated in an ambient HOA component computation step or stage 24, and is represented by HOA domain coefficients CA(Z).

[0157] In the second step shown in Fig. 2b, a perceptual coding of the directional signals X(l) and the ambient HOA component CA(V) is carried out as follows:

[0158] The conventional time domain directional signals X(V) can be individually compressed in a perceptual coder 27 using any known perceptual compression technique.

[0159] The compression of the ambient HOA domain component CA(V) is carried out in two sub steps or stages.

[0160] The first substep or stage 25 performs a reduction of the original Ambisonics order N to NREO, e.g. NREO= 2, result¬ing in the ambient HOA component CA RED(l) . Here, the as¬sumption is exploited that the ambient sound field compo- nent can be represented with sufficient accuracy by HOA with a low order. The second substep or stage 26 is based on a compression described in patent application EP

[0161] 10306472.1. The 0RED: = (NRED+ l)2HOA signals CA,RED(0 of the ambient sound field component, which were computed at substep / stage 25, are transformed into OREDequivalent signals WARED(l) in the spatial domain by applying a

[0162] Spherical Harmonic Transform, resulting in conventional time domain signals which can be input to a bank of par¬allel perceptual codecs 27. Any known perceptual coding or compression technique can be applied. The encoded di¬rectional signals X(V) and the order-reduced encoded spa¬tial domain signals WARED(l) are output and can be trans¬mitted or stored.Advantageously, the perceptual compression of all time do¬main signals X(l) and WA,RED(0 can be performed jointly in a perceptual coder 27 in order to improve the overall coding efficiency by exploiting the potentially remaining inter- channel correlations.

[0163] Decompression

[0164] The decompression processing for a received or replayed signal is depicted in Fig. 3. Like the compression processing, it includes two successive steps.

[0165] In the first step or stage shown in Fig. 3a, in a perceptual decoding 31 a perceptual decoding or decompression of the encoded directional signals X(l) and of the order-reduced en¬coded spatial domain signals WA,RED(0 is carried out, where X(X) is the represents component and WARED(l) represents the ambient HOA component. The perceptually decoded or decom¬pressed spatial domain signals WARED(l) are transformed in an inverse spherical harmonic transformer 32 to an HOA domain representation CAREO(l) of order NREDvia an inverse Spherical Harmonics transform. Thereafter, in an order extension step or stage 33 an appropriate HOA representation CA(V) of order N is estimated from CAREO(l) by order extension.

[0166] In the second step or stage shown in Fig. 3b, the total HOA representation C(V) is re-composed in an HOA signal assembler 34 from the directional signals X(V) and the corresponding direction information ΩΟΟΜ( as well as from the original- order ambient HOA component CA(V).

[0167] Achievable data rate reduction

[0168] A problem solved by the invention is the considerable reduc¬tion of the data rate as compared to existing compression methods for HOA representations. In the following the achievable compression rate compared to the non-compressedHOA representation is discussed. The compression rate results from the comparison of the data rate required for the transmission of a non-compressed HOA signal C(V) of order N with the data rate required for the transmission of a com- pressed signal representation consisting of D perceptually coded directional signals X(l) with corresponding directions ΩΟΟΜ(and NREDperceptually coded spatial domain signals WA,RED( representing the ambient HOA component.

[0169] For the transmission of the non-compressed HOA signal C(V) a data rate of 0 · fs· is required. On the contrary, the transmission of D perceptually coded directional signals X(l) requires a data rate of D - fb C0O, whereb,C0Ddenotes the bit rate of the perceptually coded signals. Similarly, the transmission of the NREDperceptually coded spatial domain signals W^A,RED(0 signals requires a bit rate of ORED" b,C0D·

[0170] The directions ΩΟΟΜ( are assumed to be computed based on a much lower rate compared to the sampling rate / s, i.e. they are assumed to be fixed for the duration of a signal frame consisting of B samples, e.g. B = 1200 for a sampling rate of fs = 48kHz, and the corresponding data rate share can be ne¬glected for the computation of the total data rate of the compressed HOA signal.

[0171] Therefore, the transmission of the compressed representation requires a data rate of approximately (D + OED) "b,C0D· Conse- quently, the compression rate rC0MPRis

[0172] TcuMfK - · (6 )

[0174] For example, the compression of an HOA representation of order N = 4 employing a sampling rate fs = 48kHz and = 16 bits per sample to a representation with D = 3 dominant directions

[0175] kbits using a reduced HOA order NREO= 2 and a bit rate of 64

[0176] will result in a compression rate of rC0MPR~ 2 . The trans-mission of the compressed representation requires a data

[0177] „,„ kbits

[0178] rate of approximately 76o .

[0179] Reduced probability for occurrence of coding noise unmasking As explained in the Background section, the perceptual com¬pression of spatial domain signals described in patent ap¬plication EP 10306472.1 suffers from remaining cross correlations between the signals, which may lead to unmasking of perceptual coding noise. According to the invention, the dominant directional signals are first extracted from the HOA sound field representation before being perceptually coded. This means that, when composing the HOA representa¬tion, after perceptual decoding the coding noise has exactly the same spatial directivity as the directional signals. In particular, the contributions of the coding noise as well as that of the directional signal to any arbitrary direction is deterministically described by the spatial dispersion func¬tion explained in section Spatial resolution with finite order. In other words, at any time instant the HOA coeffi- cients vector representing the coding noise is exactly a multiple of the HOA coefficients vector representing the di¬rectional signal. Thus, an arbitrarily weighted sum of the noisy HOA coefficients will not lead to any unmasking of the perceptual coding noise.

[0180] Further, the ambient component of reduced order is processed exactly as proposed in EP 10306472.1, but because per defi¬nition the spatial domain signals of the ambient component have a rather low correlation between each other, the probability for perceptual noise unmasking is low.

[0181] Improved direction estimation

[0182] The inventive direction estimation is dependent on the di¬rectional power distribution of the energetically dominant HOA component. The directional power distribution is comput-ed from the rank-reduced correlation matrix of the HOA rep¬resentation, which is obtained by eigenvalue decomposition of the correlation matrix of the HOA representation.

[0183] Compared to the direction estimation used in the above- mentioned "Plane-wave decomposition ..." article, it offers the advantage of being more precise, since focusing on the energetically dominant HOA component instead of using the complete HOA representation for the direction estimation reduces the spatial blurring of the directional power distri- bution.

[0184] Compared to the direction estimation proposed in the above- mentioned "The Application of Compressive Sampling to the Analysis and Synthesis of Spatial Sound Fields" and "Time Domain Reconstruction of Spatial Sound Fields Using Com- pressed Sensing" articles, it offers the advantage of being more robust. The reason is that the decomposition of the HOA representation into the directional and ambient component can hardly ever be accomplished perfectly, so that there re¬mains a small ambient component amount in the directional component. Then, compressive sampling methods like in these two articles fail to provide reasonable direction estimates due to their high sensitivity to the presence of ambient signals .

[0185] Advantageously, the inventive direction estimation does not suffer from this problem.

[0186] Alternative applications of the HOA representation decompo¬se tion

[0187] The described decomposition of the HOA representation into a number of directional signals with related direction infor¬mation and an ambient component in HOA domain can be used for a signal-adaptive DirAC-like rendering of the HOA repre¬sentation according to that proposed in the above-mentioned Pulkki article "Spatial Sound Reproduction with DirectionalAudio Coding" .

[0188] Each HOA component can be rendered differently because the physical characteristics of the two components are differ¬ent. For example, the directional signals can be rendered to the loudspeakers using signal panning techniques like Vector Based Amplitude Panning (VBAP) , cf. V. Pulkki, "Virtual Sound Source Positioning Using Vector Base Amplitude Panning", Journal of Audio Eng. Society, vol.45, no.6, pp.456- 466, 1997. The ambient HOA component can be rendered using known standard HOA rendering techniques.

[0189] Such rendering is not restricted to Ambisonics representa¬tion of order ' 1 ' and can thus be seen as an extension of the DirAC-like rendering to HOA representations of order N > 1.

[0190] The estimation of several directions from an HOA signal rep¬resentation can be used for any related kind of sound field analysis . The following sections describe in more detail the signal processing steps.

[0191] Compression

[0192] Definition of input format

[0193] As input, the scaled time domain HOA coefficients (t) de- fined in eq. (26) are assumed to be sampled at a rate f$=— .

[0194] A vector c(j) is defined to be composed of all coefficients belonging to the sampling time t = jTSrj E TL, according to

[0195] c(;) : = [c00OTs), cfH;s), c°(^^^eK° . (65)

[0196] Framing

[0197] The incoming vectors c(j) of scaled HOA coefficients are framed in framing step or stage 21 into non-overlappingframes of length B according to

[0198] C(Z): = [c lB + 1) c(Z5 + 2) ... c lB + B)] E R0xB. (66) Assuming a sampling rate of f$= 48kHz, an appropriate frame length is B = 1200 samples corresponding to a frame duration of 25ms.

[0199] Estimation of dominant directions

[0200] For the estimation of the dominant directions the following correlation matrix

[0201] B( : = (ί-ί') ε 1ΟΧΟ

[0202] . (67) is computed. The summation over the current frame Z and L— l previous frames indicates that the directional analysis is based on long overlapping groups of frames with L-B samples, i.e. for each current frame the content of adjacent frames is taken into consideration. This contributes to the stabil¬ity of the directional analysis for two reasons: longer frames are resulting in a greater number of observations, and the direction estimates are smoothed due to overlapping frames .

[0203] Assuming fs= 48kHz and B = 1200, a reasonable value for L is 4 corresponding to an overall frame duration of 100ms.

[0204] Next, an eigenvalue decomposition of the correlation matrix B l) is determined according to B(Z) = V(Z)A(Z)VT(Z) , (68) wherein matrix V(Z) is composed of the eigenvectors V[(Z), l≤ i≤ 0, as V(Z):= [Vl(Z) v2(Z) ... v0(Z)] £ R0x0(69) and matrix Λ(Ζ) is a diagonal matrix with the corresponding eigenvalues A[(Z), 1 < i < 0, on its diagonal:

[0205] A(Z): = diag(l1(Z),l2(Z),...,l0(Z)) £ ]R0x0. (70) It is assumed that the eigenvalues are indexed in a non- ascending order, i.e. λ^ΐ)≥ λ2{ΐ)≥ ···≥ λ0(ΐ) . (71)Thereafter, the index set {1, ... ,0(1)} of dominant eigenvalues is computed. One possibility to manage this is defining a desired minimal broadband directional-to-ambient power ratio DARM1Nand then determining 0(1) such that

[0206] 101og10> -DARMINVi < 0(D and 101og10> -D-4RMINfor i = 0(l) + l . (72) A reasonable choice for DARM1Nis 15dB. The number of domi¬nant eigenvalues is further constrained to be not greater than D in order to concentrate on no more than D dominant directions. This is accomplished by replacing the index set

[0207] {1, ...,J( > bY {l,...,0(l)}, where 0(1): = max(0(l),D) (73)

[0208] Next, the J(Z)-rank approximation of (l) is obtained by

[0209] Bj(l) : = Vj(l)Aj(l)Vj(l) , where (74) W :=[ . v2( ... vJ(( ] £]R0XJ« , (75)

[0210] Aj(l) : = diag (l1( , A2( ,...,¼)( ) e K?«x?(0. (76)

[0211] This matrix should contain the contributions of the dominant directional components to B(l) . Thereafter, the vector

[0212] σ2(1):= diag(≡TBj( S) £ RQ(77)

[0213] is computed, where Ξ denotes a mode matrix with respect to a high number of nearly equally distributed test directions £lq:= (θ ,φ ) , l≤q≤Q, where 6qE [0, π] denotes the inclination angle Θ E [Ο,π] measured from the polar axis z and (f)qE [—π,π{ denotes the azimuth angle measured in the x=y plane from the x axis .

[0214] Mode matrix Ξ is defined by Ξ: = [ S2... SQ] £ M°XQ(79) with S?:= ^(ίΙ^ίΗίΙ,Ι^ίΚΙ^1^).^^)-^"^)]7(8°) for l≤q≤Q.The oq(V) elements of σ2(Ζ) are approximations of the powers of plane waves, corresponding to dominant directional signals, impinging from the directions . The theoretical explana¬tion for that is provided in the below section Explanation of direction search algorithm.

[0215] From σ2(Ζ) a number D(V) of dominant directions Ω CURRDOM,<5(0, 1≤ d < D(V), for the determination of the directional signal components is computed. The number of dominant directions is thereby constrained to fulfil D(V) < D in order to assure a constant data rate. However, if a variable data rate is al¬lowed, the number of dominant directions can be adapted to the current sound scene.

[0216] One possibility to compute the D(V) dominant directions is to set the first dominant direction to that with the maximum power, i.e. ilCURRDOM,i( = ¾with<7i:= argmaxq Mia (l) and

[0217] M^. = {1,2, ... , Q} . Assuming that the power maximum is created by a dominant directional signal, and considering the fact that using a HOA representation of finite order N results in a spatial dispersion of directional signals (cf. the above- mentioned "Plane-wave decomposition ..." article), it can be concluded that in the directional neighbourhood of

[0218] ^CURRDOM.I© there should occur power components belonging to the same directional signal. Since the spatial signal dis- persion can be expressed by the function vN(G>qqi) (see eq. (38)), where 0q(?i: = (ftq, denotes the angle between andpower belonging to the directional sig¬nal declines according to vN2(®qq^) . Therefore it is reasona¬ble to exclude all directions in the directional neigh- bourhood of Slqiwith Qql< ΘΜΙΝ forthe search of further dom¬inant directions. The distance ©MINcanbe chosen as the first zero of vN(x), which is approximately given by — forN> 4 . The second dominant direction is then set to that with the maximum power in the remaining directions E M2with

[0219] M2: = {q £ . j Qq-L> ©MIN) · The remaining dominant directions are determined in an analogous way.

[0220] The number D(V) of dominant directions can be determined by regarding the powers σ2_( assigned to the individual domi- nant directions Slqand searching for the case where the ra¬tioexceeds the value of a desired direct to ambi¬ent p t D(V) satisfies lOlog!o > DARmNV D( . (8i:

[0221] The overall processing for the computation of all dominant directions is can be carried out as follows:

[0222] Algorithm 1 Search of dominant directions given power distrikitioa on the sphere

[0223] PowerFlag = true

[0224] 1 = 1

[0226] repeat

[0227] ¾ = argmax^ I) if i>l Λ DARMiN then

[0228] PowerFlag =

[0229] else

[0230] ^CURRDOMi"©='f½

[0231] •%i = e Mil (ί1,. ί19;) > §Μκ}

[0232] d = d+ l

[0233] end if

[0234] until d > D V PowerFlag = false]

[0235] D(l) = d-l

[0236] Next, the directions1≤ d < D(l), obtained in the current frame are smoothed with the directions from the pre¬vious frames, resulting in smoothed directions ΩΌ0Μά(1), 1 < d < D . This operation can be subdivided into two succes¬sive parts:(a) The current dominant directionsl≤d≤D(Z), are assigned to the smoothed directions SlO0M d(l— l) , l≤ d < D, from the previous frame. The assignment func¬tion fM l: (l, ... , D( )→{1,■■■ , D] is determined such that the sum of angles between assigned directions

[0237] is minimised. Such an assignment problem can be solved using the well-known Hungarian algorithm, cf. H.W. Kuhn, "The Hungarian method for the assignment problem", Naval research logistics quarterly 2, no.1-2, pp.83-97, 1955.

[0238] The angles between current directionsand in¬active directions (see below for explanation of the term

[0239] 'inactive direction') from the previous frame Ω.Ώ0Μ ά1— 1) are set to 2ΘΜΙΝ. This operation has the effect that cur- rent directions / which are closer than 2ΘΜΙΝto previously active directions SlO0M d(l— l) , are attempt¬ed to be assigned to them. If the distance exceeds 2ΘΜΙΝ, the corresponding current direction is assumed to belong to a new signal, which means that it is favoured to be assigned to a previously inactive direction i¾DOM,d(^—1) ·

[0240] Remark: when allowing a greater latency of the overall compression algorithm, the assignment of successive di¬rection estimates may be performed more robust. For ex¬ample, abrupt direction changes may be better identified without mixing them up with outliers resulting from estimation errors.

[0241] (b) The smoothed directions SlO0M d(l— l) , 1 < d < D are computed using the assignment from step (a) . The smoothing is based on spherical geometry rather than Euclidean geome- try. For each of the current dominant directions

[0242] 1≤ d < D (l) , the smoothing is performed along the minor arc of the great circle crossing the twopoints on the sphere, which are specified by the direc¬tions i¾cuRRDOM,d(and i^DOM,d(^—1) · Explicitly, the azimuth and inclination angles are smoothed independently by computing the exponentially-weighted moving average with a smoothing factor <¾ . For the inclination angle this results in the following smoothing operation:

[0243] l≤d≤D l) . ( 8 3 ) For the azimuth angle the smoothing has to be modified to achieve a correct smoothing at the transition from π— ε to — π , ε > 0, and the transition in the opposite di¬rection. This can be taken into consideration by first computing the difference angle modulo 2π as [o,27r[,d(:= [ΦΌΟΜ (0 -DOM, / fI(d)(;- !)] mod27z: , ( 8 4 ) which is converted to the interval [—π,π[ by

[0244] Λr / .[o,2*[,d(0 forφ,[0,2π[Λ{ΐ)<π

[0245] φ[02π[-ω-2π for Αφ,[0,2π[,α( ≥ π'

[0246] The smoothed dominant azimuth angle modulo 2π is deter¬mined as

[0247] ¾θΜ,[ο,2π[,5 ^):= [¾OM,d(Z-D + ^ - Δι[_πιπ[ι5(Ζ)]ιηοά27Γ ( 8 6 ) and is finally converted to lie within the interval

[0248] [—π,π[ by

[0249] -rΠΛ_ fiDOM.[0.2n[.dW f°r¾OM,[0,2ff[,d^) <U

[0250] In case D(l) < D , there are directions SlO0Md(l— l) from the previous frame that do not get an assigned current dominant direction. The corresponding index set is denoted by

[0251] The respective directions are copied from the last frame, i.e. nDOM,d( =- 1) for d £NA(!) . ( 8 9 )Directions which are not assigned for a predefined number of frames are termed inactive.

[0252] Thereafter the index set of active directions denoted by

[0253] -M"ACT( is computed. Its cardinality is denoted by OACT(: =

[0254] Then all smoothed directions are concatenated into a single direction matrix as

[0255] = [i¾DOM,l(ΩϋΟΜ,2( -ΩϋΟΜ,θ( ] · (90)

[0256] Computation of direction signals

[0257] The computation of the direction signals is based on mode matching. In particular, a search is made for those directional signals whose HOA representation results in the best approximation of the given HOA signal. Because the changes of the directions between successive frames can lead to a discontinuity of the directional signals, estimates of the directional signals for overlapping frames can be computed, followed by smoothing the results of successive overlapping frames using an appropriate window function. The smoothing, however, introduces a latency of a single frame.

[0258] The detailed estimation of the directional signals is ex¬plained in the following:

[0259] First, the mode matrix based on the smoothed active direc- tions is computed according to (91)

[0260] ,dACT,iW SDOM.dACT.zW -SDOM,dACT,DAC1.)(0] £ MOXDACT(

[0261] wherein dACT, 1 < j < DACT(l) denotes the indices of the active directions .

[0262] Next, a matrixis computed that contains the non- smoothed estimates of all directional signals for the (Z— 1)-th and Z-th frame:

[0263] [XINST(U) INSTC ) ... xmST(l,2B)] E RDx2B(93) with

[0264] T

[0265] XINST(U) = [xiNST,i(l>fi>xiNST,2(l > - >XINST,D(I ] RD,1≤j≤ 2B . (94)

[0266] This is accomplished in two steps. In the first step, the directional signal samples in the rows corresponding to in¬active directions are set to zero, i.e.

[0267] *iNST,d(U) = 0 VI≤j≤ 2B, if d t MACTl) . (95) In the second step, the directional signal samples corre¬sponding to active directions are obtained by first arrang¬ing them in a matrix according to

[0268] INST,dACT,iU'1) INST,dACT,iU'

[0269] XINST,ACT(:(96) xiNST,dACTjjACT(o(l> i ST,dACT,DACT(0(X 25).

[0270] This matrix is then computed such as to minimise the Euclid- ean norm of the error SACT(Z)XINSTACT(Z)— [C(Z— 1) C(Z)] · (97) The solution is given by

[0271] XINST,ACT( = [3XcT( 3ACT( ]_13XcT( [C -l) C(Z)] . (98)

[0272] The estimates of the directional signals XmsT,d(l>j r l≤ d <D, are windowed by an appropriate window function w(j):

[0273] iNST,wiN,d(U): = *iNST,d(U) ·W( l≤j≤ 2B . (99) An example for the window function is given by the periodic Hamming window defined by

[0274] where KWdenotes a scaling factor which is determined such that the sum of the shifted windows equals ' 1 ' . The smoothed directional signals for the (Z— l)-th frame are computed by the appropriate superposition of windowed non-smoothed esti¬mates according to

[0275] xd((Z - 1)5 +;') = xmST,w\N,d(l-1'B+J +*iNST,wiN,d(U) · (101)The samples of all smoothed directional signals for the

[0276] (Z— l)-th frame are arranged in matrix X(Z— 1) as (102) X(Z-1): = [x((Z- 1)5 + 1) x((Z - 1)5 + 2) ... x((Z - 1)5 + 5)] E RDXBwith x(j) = [χ1{ί,χ2φ,-,χοΦΥ ei° . (103)

[0277] Computation of ambient HOA component

[0278] The ambient HOA component CA(Z— 1) is obtained by subtracting the total directional HOA component CDIR(Z— 1) from the total HOA representation C(Z— 1) according to

[0279] CA(Z - 1): = C(Z - 1) - CDIR(Z - 1) aOxB (104) w — 1) is determined by

[0280] INST,WIN,1

[0281] + Ξ DOM (Z) (105)

[0282] INST,WIN,D INST,WIN,D (Z,5)

[0283] and where ΞΟΟΜ( denotes the mode matrix based on all smoothed directions defined by

[0284] SDOM( := [SDOM,I( Sdom,2( - SDOM,D( ] G R0XD. (106) Because the computation of the total directional HOA compo¬nent is also based on a spatial smoothing of overlapping successive instantaneous total directional HOA components, the ambient HOA component is also obtained with a latency of a single frame.

[0285] Order reduction for ambient HOA component

[0286] Expressing CA(Z— 1) through its components as

[0287] c0°A((Z - 1)5 + 1) c0°A((Z - 1)5 + 5)

[0288] cA(z - i) = : ··. : (107)

[0289] A((Z - 1)5 + 1)A((Z - 1)5 + 5)

[0290] the order reduction is accomplished by dropping all HOA co¬efficients c™A(j) with n > NRED: (108

[0291] Spherical Harmonic Transform for ambient HOA component

[0292] The Spherical Harmonic Transform is performed by the multi¬plication of the ambient HOA component of reduced order

[0293] QA,RED( with the inverse of the mode matrix

[0294] S := [SA,ISA,2... SA,0RED] £ RREDXORED ( 109;

[0295] based on OREDbeing uniformly distributed directions

[0296] 1 < d≤ 0RED: WARED( = (SA)_1CAiRED( .

[0297] Decompression

[0298] Inverse Spherical Harmonic Transform

[0299] The perceptually decompressed spatial domain signals WARED() are transformed to a HOA domain representation CARED(Z) of order NREo via an Inverse Spherical Harmonics Transform by

[0300] A,RED( = SAWa,red( . (112)

[0301] Order extension

[0302] The Ambisonics order of the HOA representation CARED

[0303] tended to N by appending zeros according to

[0304] where 0MXJLdenotes a zero matrix with m rows and n columns HOA coefficients composition

[0305] The final decompressed HOA coefficients are additively com¬posed of the directional and the ambient HOA component ac¬cording to C( -1):=CA( -1) + CDIR( -1) . (114) At this stage, once again a latency of a single frame is in- troduced to allow the directional HOA component to be com-puted based on spatial smoothing. By doing this, potential undesired discontinuities in the directional component of the sound field resulting from the changes of the directions between successive frames are avoided.

[0306] To compute the smoothed directional HOA component, two suc¬cessive frames containing the estimates of all individual directional signals are concatenated into a single long frame as XINST( : = [X(Z - 1) X(0- aDx2B (115)

[0307] Each of the individual signal excerpts contained in this long frame are multiplied by a window function, e.g. like that of eq. (100) . When expressing the long frame XINSTC

[0308] through its components by

[0309] X INST (0 = (116)

[0310] the windowing operation can be formulated as computing the windowed signal excerptsr 1≤ d < D , by

[0311] iNST,wiN,d(U) = iNST,d(U)■w(j), l≤j≤2B, l≤d≤D . (117) Finally, the total directional HOA component CDIR(Z— 1) is ob¬tained by encoding all the windowed directional signal ex¬cerpts into the appropriate directions and superposing them in an overlapped fashion:

[0313] Explanation of direction search algorithm

[0314] In the following, the motivation is explained behind the di¬rection search processing described in section Estimation of dominant directions . It is based on some assumptions which are defined first.Assumptions

[0315] The HOA coefficients vector c(y), which is in general related to the time domain amplitude density function dj, Ω) through

[0316] c(j) = fS2 d(j,ii)S(G)da , (119) is assumed to obey the following model:

[0317] c(j) =∑ Xi(j)S{ilx.(l)) + cAfor IB + I≤j≤{l + 1)B . (120) This model states that the HOA coefficients vector c(j) is on one hand created by / dominant directional source signals r 1≤ i≤ / , arriving from the directions ΩΧ;(Ζ) in the Z-th frame. In particular, the directions are assumed to be fixed for the duration of a single frame. The number of dominant source signals / is assumed to be distinctly smaller than the total number of HOA coefficients 0 . Further, the frame length B is assumed to be distinctly greater than 0 . On the other hand, the vector c(j) consists of a residual componentCA0) r which can be regarded as representing the ideally iso¬tropic ambient sound field.

[0318] The individual HOA coefficient vector components are assumed to have the following properties:

[0319] · The dominant source signals are assumed to be zero mean, i.e. Xi J*0 Vl<i< / , (121) and are assumed to be uncorrelated with each other, i.e.

[0320] ¾¾B+I *i( / )*.,( / )¾Si- a .d VI < i, i'≤ I ( 122 ) with <7X.(Z) denoting the average power of the i-th signal for the Z-th frame.

[0321] • The dominant source signals are assumed to be uncorrelated with the ambient component of HOA coefficient vector, i.e.

[0322] ¾=£+i *.0')CA0') * 0 V1<Z<7 . (123)

[0323] • The ambient HOA component vector is assumed to be zero mean and is assumed to have the covariance matrix

[0324] ∑A( : = CA

[0325] (;)cl0-) . (124)• The direct-to-ambient power ratio DAR(Z) of each frame Z, which is here defined by DAR(Z): = lOlog (125)

[0326] is assumed to be greater than a predefined desired value DARMIN, i.e. DAR(Z) > DARMIN.

[0327] (126)

[0328] Explanation of direction search

[0329] For the explanation the case is considered where the corre¬lation matrix B(Z) (see eq. (67)) is computed based only on the samples of the Z-th frame without considering the samples of the L—l previous frames. This operation corresponds to setting L = l. Consequently, the correlation matrix can be expressed by B(Z) = ^ C(Z)CT(Z) (127)

[0330] = -B;-:S+B1c{i {j . (128) By substituting the model assumption in eq. (120) into eq. (128) and by using equations (122) and (123) and the def¬inition in eq. (124), the correlation matrix B(Z) can be approximated as (129)

[0331] B

[0333] *∑i=1¾( s(nXi(Z))sr(nXi(Z)) +∑A(z) . (i3i)

[0334] From eq. (131) it can be seen that B(Z) approximately consists of two additive components attributable to the directional and to the ambient HOA component. Its J(Z)-rank approximation Bj(Z) provides an approximation of the directional HOA compo- nent, i.e. Β,(Ζ) *∑[=1¾(Z)S(ftx.(Z))ST(ftx.(Z)) , (132) which follows from the eq. (126) on the directional-to- ambient power ratio.However, it should be stressed that some portion of ∑A( will inevitably leak into Bj(Z), since ∑A( has full rank in general and thus, the subspaces spanned by the columns of the matrices ∑\=1σχ. (l)S(Slx. (l))ST(Slx.(l)) and ∑A(Z) are not orthog¬onal to each other. With eq. (132) the vector σ2(Ζ) in

[0335] eq. (77), which is used for the search of the dominant direc¬tions, can be expressed by σ2(1) = diag(ZTBj(l)Z) (133)

[0337] In eq. (135) the following property of Spherical Harmonics shown in eq. (47) was used: ST(ilq)s(ilq,) = ¾( (ftq,ftq,)) . (137)

[0338] Eq. (136) shows that the σ^(Ζ) components of σ2(Ζ) are approxi¬mations of the powers of signals arriving from the test di¬rections Ω^, 1 < q < Q .

Claims

Claims1. Method for compressing a Higher Order Ambisonics HOA signal representation (C( ) , said method including the steps:estimating (22) dominant directions, wherein said dominant direction estimation is dependent on a directional power distribution of the energetically dominant HOA com¬ ponents;- decomposing or decoding (23, 24) the HOA signal representation into a number of dominant directional signals(X(l)) in time domain and related direction information (ΩΟΟΜ( ) r and a residual ambient component in HOA domain (CA( ) , wherein said residual ambient component repre- sents the difference between said HOA signal representa¬ tion (C( ) and a representation (CDIR(Z)) of said dominant directional signals (X(l)) ;compressing (25) said residual ambient component by re¬ ducing its order as compared to its original order;- transforming (26) said residual ambient HOA component( "A,RED( ) of reduced order to the spatial domain;perceptually encoding (27) said dominant directional sig¬ nals and said transformed residual ambient HOA component.

2. Method for decompressing a Higher Order Ambisonics HOA signal representation (C( ) that was compressed by the steps :estimating (22) dominant directions, wherein said dominant direction estimation is dependent on a directional power distribution of the energetically dominant HOA com¬ ponents;decomposing or decoding (23, 24) the HOA signal representation into a number of dominant directional signals (X(l)) in time domain and related direction information (ΩΟΟΜ( ) r and a residual ambient component in HOA domain (CA( ) , wherein said residual ambient component repre¬ sents the difference between said HOA signal representa- tion (C( ) and a representation (CDIR(Z)) of said dominant directional signals (X(l)) ;compressing (25) said residual ambient component by re¬ ducing its order as compared to its original order;transforming (26) said residual ambient HOA component( "A,RED( ) of reduced order to the spatial domain;perceptually encoding (27) said dominant directional sig¬ nals and said transformed residual ambient HOA component, said method including the steps:perceptually decoding (31) said perceptually encoded dom- inant directional signals (X(l)) and said perceptually en¬ coded transformed residual ambient HOA component inverse transforming (32) said perceptually decoded transformed residual ambient HOA component (WARED (Z) ) so as to get an HOA domain representation (CAJRED(Z)) ;performing (33) an order extension of said inverse transformed residual ambient HOA component so as to establish an original-order ambient HOA component (CA(Z)) ;composing (34) said perceptually decoded dominant direc- tional signals (X(l)) , said direction information (ΩΟΟΜ( ) and said original-order extended ambient HOA component (CA( ) so as to get an HOA signal representation (C(Z)) ·Apparatus for compressing a Higher Order Ambisonics HOA signal representation (C(l)) , said apparatus including: means (22) being adapted for estimating dominant direc¬ tions, wherein said dominant direction estimation is de pendent on a directional power distribution of the ener getically dominant HOA components;means (23, 24) being adapted for decomposing or decoding the HOA signal representation into a number of dominant directional signals (X(l)) in time domain and related di- rection information (ΩΟΟΜ( ) r and a residual ambient com¬ ponent in HOA domain (CA(Z)) , wherein said residual ambi¬ ent component represents the difference between said HOA signal representation (C( ) and a representation (CDIR(Z)) of said dominant directional signals (X(l)) ;- means (25) being adapted for compressing said residual ambient component by reducing its order as compared to its original order;means (26) being adapted for transforming said residual ambient HOA component (CA,RED(0) of reduced order to the spatial domain;means (27) being adapted for perceptually encoding said dominant directional signals and said transformed residu¬ al ambient HOA component.

4. Apparatus for decompressing a Higher Order Ambisonics HOA signal representation (C( ) that was compressed by the steps :estimating (22) dominant directions, wherein said dominant direction estimation is dependent on a directional power distribution of the energetically dominant HOA com¬ ponents;decomposing or decoding (23, 24) the HOA signal representation into a number of dominant directional signals(X(l)) in time domain and related direction information (^DOMC ) r and a residual ambient component in HOA domain(CA( ) , wherein said residual ambient component repre¬ sents the difference between said HOA signal representa¬ tion (C( ) and a representation (CDIR(Z)) of said dominant directional signals (X(l)) ;compressing (25) said residual ambient component by re¬ ducing its order as compared to its original order;transforming (26) said residual ambient HOA component(C"A,RED( ) of reduced order to the spatial domain;perceptually encoding (27) said dominant directional sig¬ nals and said transformed residual ambient HOA component, said apparatus including:means (31) being adapted for perceptually decoding said perceptually encoded dominant directional signals (X(l)) and said perceptually encoded transformed residual ambi¬ ent HOA component (WA,RED(0 ) · 'means (32) being adapted for inverse transforming said perceptually decoded transformed residual ambient HOA component (WARED (Z) ) so as to get an HOA domain representation (C"A,RED (0 ) ;means (33) being adapted for performing an order extension of said inverse transformed residual ambient HOA component so as to establish an original-order ambient HOA component (CA(Z)) ;means (34) being adapted for composing said perceptually decoded dominant directional signals (X(l)) , said direc¬ tion information (ΩΟΟΜ( ) and said original-order extend¬ ed ambient HOA component (CA(Z)) so as to get an HOA sig- nal representation (C( ) ·Method according to the method of claim 1, or apparatus according to the apparatus of claim 3, wherein incoming vectors (c()) of HOA coefficients are framed (21) into non-overlapping frames (C( ) and wherein a frame dura¬ tion can be 25ms.

6. Method according to the method of claim 1 or 5, or appa- ratus according to the apparatus of claim 3 or 5, wherein said dominant directions estimating (22) is dependent on long overlapping groups of frames, such that for each current frame the content of adjacent frames is taken in- to consideration.Method according to the method of one of claims 1, 5 and 6, or apparatus according to the apparatus of one of claims 3, 5 and 6, wherein said dominant directional sig¬ nals (X(l)) and said transformed ambient HOA component (WA,RED( ) are jointly perceptually compressed (27).Method according to the method of one of claims 1 and 5 to 7, or apparatus according to the apparatus of one of claims 3 and 5 to 7, wherein said decomposing of the HOA signal representation into a number of dominant direc¬ tional signals in time domain with related direction in¬ formation and a residual ambient component in HOA domain is used for a signal-adaptive DirAC-like rendering of the HOA representation, wherein DirAC means Directional Audio Coding according to Pulkki.

9. An HOA signal that is compressed according to the method of one of claims 1 and 5 to 8.

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