Spatial Audio Stream Selection With Directional Enhancement
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current telecommunication audio systems face challenges in presenting spatial audio effectively, as they often fail to provide clear and immersive experiences due to limitations in audio quality and directional accuracy, leading to missed or unappreciated audio content.
Innovation Solution
An apparatus and method that receive audio streams with location information, enhance the quality of specific audio streams based on user input, and present them as spatial audio with offset directions, improving audio quality through increased bit rates, noise reduction, and directional capture, while allowing users to control playback and focus on specific audio sources.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If spatial audio presentation is implemented with multiple audio streams from different directions, then immersive audio experience is improved, but audio quality and directional accuracy deteriorate due to bandwidth limitations and processing constraints
Solution Approach 1:
The audio content is segmented into multiple independent audio streams, each associated with specific location information and perceived direction. This allows the system to maintain high directional accuracy for each individual stream while presenting them collectively as immersive spatial audio, resolving the contradiction between spatial versatility and directional precision.
Solution Approach 2:
Location information and perceived direction data are embedded in advance within each audio stream during encoding. This preliminary action ensures that directional accuracy is preserved without requiring complex real-time processing, enabling high-fidelity spatial audio presentation while maintaining precision.
2Manufacturing precision
If enhanced audio quality is provided for specific audio streams through higher bit rates and noise reduction, then audio quality is improved, but system complexity and processing requirements worsen
Solution Approach 1:
Enhanced audio quality processing (higher bit rates, noise reduction) is applied selectively to specific audio streams based on user selection and directional relevance, rather than uniformly to all streams. This local quality enhancement improves perceived audio quality while minimizing overall system complexity by processing only necessary streams at high fidelity.
Solution Approach 2:
The system automatically identifies and enhances audio streams that are most relevant to the user's current focus direction, using the embedded location information to determine which streams require enhanced processing. This self-service approach reduces processing complexity by eliminating the need for manual configuration while maintaining high audio quality where needed.
3Adaptability or versatility
If multiple audio streams are presented simultaneously from different perceived directions, then immersive experience is improved, but user ability to focus on specific audio sources worsens due to audio overlap and confusion
Solution Approach 1:
The system incorporates user input (such as gesture direction) as feedback to dynamically adjust which audio streams are enhanced and how they are presented. This feedback mechanism allows users to easily select and focus on specific audio sources by indicating direction, while the system responds by enhancing those specific streams, maintaining both spatial versatility and ease of operation.
Solution Approach 2:
The audio presentation is made dynamic, allowing the system to adjust enhancement levels and perceived directions of individual audio streams in real-time based on user input. This dynamic adjustment enables users to focus on specific audio sources when needed while maintaining immersive spatial audio presentation, resolving the contradiction between versatility and ease of operation.
Data Source
AI summary
An apparatus comprising means configured to: receive first audio content from a remote apparatus, the audio content comprising at least one audio stream associated with respective location information; present the audio stream as spatial audio to be perceived as originating from a respective perceived-direction based on the location information; determine a user input direction to identify one of the audio streams; transmit a message to the remote apparatus identifying the identified audio stream; receive second audio content comprising an enhanced version of the at least one identified audio stream; present the enhanced version of the identified audio stream as spatial audio, wherein the perceived-direction of the identified audio stream is offset from the second perceived-direction of the enhanced version of the identified audio stream.