Spatial Audio Clustering That Preserves Headphone Rendering Metadata
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing object-based audio systems face challenges in preserving headphone rendering metadata (HRM) due to bandwidth limitations, leading to difficulties in transmitting and rendering audio objects while maintaining artistic intent and audio quality.
Innovation Solution
An object clustering system employing an extended hybrid distance metric that combines Euclidean and angular distances, integrated with HRM considerations, to form extended hybrid distances, ensuring positional correctness and HRM preservation through a Spatial Coding algorithm.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If object-based audio systems transmit all individual audio objects separately, then audio quality and artistic intent are preserved, but bandwidth requirements and transmission complexity increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple audio objects into clusters based on spatial proximity and perceptual similarity. Objects that are close in space and have similar acoustic characteristics are grouped together, allowing them to be transmitted as a single clustered entity rather than separate individual objects, thereby reducing bandwidth consumption while maintaining audio quality
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the audio scene into multiple clusters, where each cluster represents a spatially coherent group of audio objects. This segmentation allows the system to process and transmit audio information in manageable units, reducing overall transmission complexity while preserving the spatial relationships and audio quality of individual objects within each cluster
2Productivity
If object clustering is performed to reduce bandwidth, then transmission efficiency improves, but headphone rendering metadata (HRM) information may be lost
Solution Approach 1:
The patent performs preliminary action by extracting and preserving HRM metadata from individual audio objects before clustering occurs. The HRM information is pre-processed and stored as cluster-level attributes, ensuring that headphone rendering metadata is retained and can be applied during reproduction, preventing information loss while enabling efficient clustering for transmission
3Device complexity
If the number of audio objects is reduced through clustering, then storage and rendering complexity decrease, but spatial precision and positional accuracy may deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by preserving individual object metadata (including precise spatial position information) within each cluster while only transmitting clustered audio signals. The renderer can access the original high-precision spatial metadata of individual objects even though they are grouped in clusters, allowing accurate spatial reproduction without requiring transmission of every individual object, thus maintaining spatial precision while reducing rendering complexity
Data Source
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AI summary
Systems and methods for preserving headphone rendering mode (HRM) in object clustering are described. In an embodiment, an object-based audio data processing system includes a processor configured to receive a plurality of audio objects, wherein an audio object of the plurality of audio objects is associated with respective object metadata that indicates respective spatial position information and an HRM; determine a plurality of cluster positions by applying an extended hybrid distance metric to a spatial coding algorithm to calculate a partial loudness for each of the audio objects; render the audio objects to the cluster positions to form a plurality of clusters by applying the extended hybrid distance metric to the spatial coding algorithm to calculate object-to-cluster gains; and transmit the clusters to a spatial reproduction system.