Spatial Audio Frequency-Band Multiplexing Across Multiple Sweet Spots
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing audio systems struggle to effectively render spatial audio for multiple listener sweet spots in environments where speakers are not positioned according to standard layouts, leading to suboptimal audio playback experiences.
Innovation Solution
The method involves decomposing audio data into renderer-specific frequency bands, selecting subsets of these bands for each speaker, and synthesizing them to produce output signals that account for individual listening positions and orientations, using filterbanks like STDFT, HCQMF, or QMF to ensure each frequency band is represented only once in the output, and multiplexing these signals for optimal playback across arbitrarily placed speakers.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If audio data is rendered for multiple listening configurations simultaneously, then adaptability to different listener positions is improved, but computational complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the frequency spectrum into multiple bands using filterbanks (e.g., QMF, HCQMF, or STDFT filterbanks). Each renderer processes only specific frequency bands assigned to its listening configuration, rather than processing the entire frequency spectrum. This segmentation reduces the computational load per renderer while maintaining support for multiple listening configurations simultaneously.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a frequency domain dimension by transforming the time-domain audio signal into multiple frequency bands. This allows parallel processing of different frequency bands by different renderers, effectively distributing the computational workload across multiple frequency dimensions rather than having a single renderer handle all frequencies sequentially.
2Manufacturing precision
If frequency bands are decomposed and multiplexed for multiple renderers, then audio quality for multiple sweet spots is improved, but processing time increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent performs preliminary decomposition of the audio signal into frequency bands using filterbanks before distribution to multiple renderers. This pre-processing step organizes the frequency content in advance, allowing each renderer to efficiently process its assigned bands without performing redundant decomposition operations, thereby reducing overall processing time.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent merges the processed frequency bands from multiple renderers into a composite output signal. By combining the results from parallel processing of different frequency bands, the system achieves high audio quality for multiple listening configurations simultaneously while maintaining efficient processing through coordinated merging of the subdivided frequency components.
Data Source
AI summary
Some methods involve receiving, by a control system configured for implementing a plurality of Tenderers, audio data and listening configuration data for a plurality of listening configurations, each listening configuration of the plurality of listening configurations corresponding to a listening position and a listening orientation in an audio environment, and rendering, by each Tenderer and according to the listening configuration data, the received audio data to obtain a set of Tenderer-specific loudspeaker feed signals for a corresponding listening configuration. Each Tenderer may be configured to render the audio data for a different listening configuration. Some such methods may involve decomposing each set of renderer-specific loudspeaker feed signals into a Tenderer-specific set of frequency bands and combining the renderer-specific frequency bands of each Tenderer to produce an output set of loudspeaker feed signals. Some such methods may involve outputting the output set of loudspeaker feed signals to a plurality of loudspeakers.