My experience with FOA-to-binaural rendering is pretty much the same as what Acrhontis says. I hear directional information and head tracking effects, but have never experienced the externalization and verisimilitude that direct dummy head or Algazi and Duda.'s motion-tracked binaural recordings can produce.
Aaron (hel...@ai.sri.com) Menlo Park, CA On Sat, Jun 4, 2016 at 2:31 AM, Politis Archontis < archontis.poli...@aalto.fi> wrote: > Hi Jörn, > > On 03 Jun 2016, at 15:27, Jörn Nettingsmeier <netti...@stackingdwarves.net > <mailto:netti...@stackingdwarves.net>> wrote: > > Note however that while the quality of first-order to binaural is quite > good because the listener is by definition always in the sweet spot, > first-order over speakers can be difficult for multiple listeners when > they're far outside the center. > > > This is by no means meant to provoke, but I have never managed to hear a > convincing B-format to binaural rendering, or to produce one myself. Could > you possibly share some info on the decoding approach that you used that > results in a good example? > > In my experience, no matter how much tweaking in the decoding, there is > severe localization blur, due to the large inherent spreading of > directional sounds, and low envelopment due to the wrong (high) coherence > in the binaural signals with reverberant sound, compared to the actual > binaural coherence. And there is also serious colouration, with a loss of > high-frequencies, that seems direction-dependent. The fact that everything > is on the ideal sweet spot under free-field conditions doesn’t seem to > improve much, it actually seems to do more harm (I believe that a small > amount of natural added decorrelation from a room and tiny misalignments > from speakers etc. seem to improve binaural coherence and the perceptual > quality somewhat of loudspeaker B-format reproduction). > > Listening to a binaural rendering from a real B-format recording is not so > bad, there is no reference for comparison, but for VR the difference I’ve > heard between using directly HRTFs and B-format rendering is huge. And as > many of these applications rely on sharp directional rendering with > accurate localization of multiple sound events, traditional B-format > decoding seems unsuitable to me. The performance improves somewhat with > 2nd-order rendering, and significantly with 3rd and 4th-order rendering. > Also it improves dramatically using plain B-format with a well-implemented > parametric active decoder, such as HARPEX or DirAC. > So my guidelines for VR till now have been, > a) if bandwidth is not an issue go for HOA rendering (at least 3rd-order), > b) if it is an issue, like the streaming application of the OP, stream > B-format and use an active decoder at the client side. > > But I’d like to hear many opinions on this too, and any counter examples! > > Regards, > Archontis Politis > > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: < > https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20160604/725fdd58/attachment.html > > > _______________________________________________ > Sursound mailing list > Sursound@music.vt.edu > https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, > edit account or options, view archives and so on. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20160604/30fcf67d/attachment.html> _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
