VAAE at the AES 149th Convention

This week the VAAE team will be presenting both a paper and a workshop at the virtual AES 149th Convention.

The paper, by Jacob Hollebon and Dr Filippo Fazi, is titled ‘Efficient HRTF Representation Using Compact-Mode HRTFs’. Head-Related Transfer Functions (HRTFs) are crucial tools in acoustics, and the spherical harmonic representation of a HRTF has found widespread use in audio, for example varies 3D audio techniques such as Higher Order Ambisonics (HOA). However this representation requires significantly large HRTF datasets and large numbers of audio channels which results in sizable rendering costs for sufficient detail across the audible spectrum. This paper presents a new method for processing HRTFs, so the number of spherical harmonics needed can be drastically reduced, result in the ‘Compact-Mode HRTF’. This is achieved by focusing the energy content of the HRTF into a small number of spherical harmonics through a rotation of the HRTF. This representation could therefore result in smaller, more efficient HRTF measurement rigs, smaller HRTF datasets and reduced rendering costs when using HRTFs compared to traditional representations.

The paper can be found here: AES library

The workshop is titled ‘Cross-talk Cancellation Systems: Past, Present and Future’, and is presented by Dr Filippo Fazi, Jacob Hollebon and Eric Hamdan. When binaural audio is mentioned we often think about headphone reproduction. The reproduction of binaural audio through two or more loudspeakers is, however, an attractive and widely-accepted alternative. Such systems are referred to as Cross-talk Cancellation Systems (CTCS). The workshop covers the theoretical and practical fundamentals of CTCS, whilst discussing their advantages and limitations. This is supported by real-time practical binaural demonstrations that the viewer can listen too. More advanced topics, like multichannel CTCS (i.e., loudspeaker arrays), multi-listener CTCS (i.e., for cinemas), and position-adaptive CTCS (with listener tracking) are also introduced. This workshop will be made available to watch on the website after the conference.