Perceptual enhancement of sound field reproduction in a nearly monaural sensing system

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a method for enhancing the sound field in a nearly monaural sensing system. The proposed method controls the inter-channel coherence (ICC) of a stereo sound source by incorporating early reflections into the sound source. The degree of ICC is controlled using both a decorrelator and a principal component analysis (PCA) technique, while a cascaded all-pass filter is used to induce early reflections. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method on the perception of the sound field, a subjective test is carried out. It is shown from the test that the proposed method can reduce the ICC, thus it improves the perceived sound field. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.