Spatial Audio Uniform Reverberation Dereverberation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing real-time communication systems struggle to provide uniform reverberation in virtual reality communications, leading to a degraded immersive experience due to differences in participants' physical environments and the occlusion effect.
Innovation Solution
A computer-implemented method that generates spatial audio with uniform reverberation by retrieving audio streams, removing reverberation using a dereverberation model, filtering through head-related transfer functions, and convolving with room impulse responses to create consistent reverberant sound parts for all participants.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If participants use headsets in different physical environments for real-time communication, then spatialization and reverberation can be added to enhance immersion, but the reverberation becomes non-uniform across participants degrading the immersive experience
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and removes the individual reverberation characteristics from each participant's audio signal using dereverberation models, separating the direct speech signal from the room-specific reverberation. This allows the system to apply a unified virtual room reverberation to all participants, achieving uniform reverberation across different physical environments.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a standardized copy of virtual room reverberation characteristics that is applied uniformly to all participants. Instead of using each participant's actual room reverberation, the system synthesizes and applies identical reverberation parameters (such as RT60 values, reflection patterns) to all audio signals, ensuring consistency across the virtual conference room.
2Ease of operation
If a speaker wears a headphone while speaking, then spatial audio can be delivered to the listener, but the occlusion effect blocks high-frequency components of the speaker's own voice reducing naturalness
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary bone conduction transducer that delivers the speaker's own voice directly to the bone structure, bypassing the blocked air conduction path. This mediator allows high-frequency components to reach the inner ear without being blocked by the headphone housing, maintaining natural voice perception while enabling headset usage for spatial audio delivery.
3Measurement precision
If conventional HRTF filtering is applied to spatialize speech signals, then directional audio perception is improved, but the computational complexity increases for real-time processing
Solution Approach 1:
The patent pre-computes and stores head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) for various directional positions before real-time communication. During actual use, the system simply retrieves and applies the appropriate pre-computed HRTF based on the participant's virtual position, avoiding real-time complex calculations while maintaining accurate directional audio perception.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The solution effectively enhances the immersive experience for both listeners and speakers in virtual reality communications by ensuring uniform reverberation, thus improving the plausibility and externalization of virtual sounds.
Implementation Method 1
removing reverberation from the first stream of audio signals to generate a first stream of dry signals
Implementation Method 2
filtering the first stream of dry signals through a head-related transfer function to generate a first direct parts of binaural sounds
Implementation Method 3
convolving the summed dry signals with a set of room impulse responses to generate reverberant sound parts of binaural sounds
Data Source
AI summary
A real-time communication software application for generating spatial audio with uniform reverberation in a real-time communication session is performed by an electronic communication device. The application is adapted to remove the reverberation of recorded speech signals from far-end participants by the dereverberation approach, render the direct sound parts by filtering the output signals by head-related transfer functions of desired directions, generate reverberant sound parts by convolving the output signals from with uniform room impulse responses or an artificial reverberator, and combine direct and reverberant sound components to generate spatialized speech signals. When speakers and listeners are located in two virtual conference rooms, the reverberation of the two rooms are coupled. The reverberant sound parts are then generated by convolving the output signals and coupled RIRs from the two rooms.