Intelligent Audio Rendering with Ad-Hoc Loudspeakers
Start date: 1 October 2016
End date: 30 April 2020
Principal Investigator: Dr Russell Mason
Co-Investigator: Dr Philip Coleman
Research Student: Craig Cieciura
Industrial Partner: BBC R&D
Project Information
Creating immersive media experiences in the home is a topic popular in both academic and mainstream publications. The positive effects of spatialised audio on listener preference have been described in the literature (e.g. [1]), and technologies for producing 3D spatial audio experiences are well established, with channel-based systems being most commonly used. Whilst the effectiveness of these systems has been well demonstrated in laboratory and cinema-type environments, implementation in the domestic environment faces multiple obstacles including the seemingly poor tradeoff between the cost of additional loudspeakers and improvement in listening experience, a lack of knowledge and confidence in the setup of such a system, and a negative perceived effect on room aesthetics.
A recent survey, performed as part of this project [2], has determined that approximately 11% of UK households own some sort of multi-channel surround sound system and that more households own wireless and smart devices, despite their comparative youth as a technology. As such, a new type of system, described by the S3A Project as Media Device Orchestration (MDO) [3], seeks to combine installed loudspeakers with these wireless loudspeakers, as well as any other potentially audio-capable devices, to create a new type of system in the domestic environment controlled by an intelligent renderer. This system would receive object-based audio, as opposed to channel-based audio, enabling the re-rendering of the sound scene specifically for the unique reproduction setup in any particular living room.
![](images/MDO-2.jpg)
The focus of this project is on the development of rules for the intelligent renderer, incorporating factors including: position, quality, number and type of loudspeakers; type of media content including audio-only and audio-visual; narrative intent; and needs of individuals and groups of listeners. To create these rules, listening experiments have been performed to compare various potential ways of re-rendering audio and the interaction of these different factors, using an MDO-type system installed in a simulated domestic living room environment. This has included textual response, individual rating and direct comparison type experiments.
- [1] Francombe, J., Brookes, T., Mason, R. and Woodcock, J. 2017. Evaluation of spatial audio reproduction methods (part 2): analysis of listener preference. Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, 65(3), pp.212-225.
- [2] Cieciura, C., Mason, R., Coleman, P. and Paradis, M. 2018. Survey of media device ownership, media service usage, and group media consumption in UK households, Audio Engineering Society Preprint, 145th Convention, Engineering Brief 456.
- [3] Francombe, J., Woodcock, J., Hughes, R.J., Mason, R., Franck, A., Pike, C., Brookes, T., Davies, W.J., Jackson, P.J., Cox, T.J. and Fazi, F.M., 2018. Qualitative evaluation of media device orchestration for immersive spatial audio reproduction. Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, 66(6), pp.414-429.