Crosstalk cancellation for spatial sound reproduction in portable devices with stereo loudspeakers

Abstract

To reproduce spatial sound through stereo loudspeakers in a portable device environment, it is important to properly design a crosstalk cancellation algorithm that cancels out acoustical crosstalk signals. In other words, the difference between the direct path of head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) and the crosstalk path of HRTFs is very small at certain frequencies, and this causes an excessive boost of frequencies when designing a crosstalk cancellation filter. To mitigate this problem, we propose a crosstalk cancellation filter design method that allows for the selective attenuation of unwanted peaks in the spectrum by constraining the magnitude of the difference between the direct and crosstalk path. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated by subjective source localization and objective tests. It is shown from the tests that the proposed method can provide improved spatial sound effects with very closely spaced stereo loudspeakers. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.