1.4 Book outline
Briefly summarized, the contents of the chapters are as follows:
Chapter 2 provides an overview of common audio reproduction, processing, and compression techniques. This includes discussion of various loudspeaker and headphone audio playback techniques, conventional audio coding, and matrix surround.
Chapter 3 reviews the literature on important aspects of the human spatial hearing system. The focus is on the known limitations of the hearing system to perceive and detect spatial characteristics. These limitations form the fundamental basis of spatial audio coding and processing techniques.
Chapter 4 explains the basic concepts of spatial audio coding, and describes the interchannel parameters that are extracted, the required signal decompositions, and the spatial reconstruction process.
Chapter 5 describes the structure of the MPEG ‘enhanced aacPlus’ codec and how spatial audio coding technology is embedded in this stereo coder.
Chapter 6 describes the structure of MPEG Surround, a multi-channel audio codec that was finalized very recently. Virtually all components of MPEG Surround are based on spatial audio coding technology and insights. The most important concepts and processing stages of this standard is be outlined.
Chapter 7 describes the process of generating a virtual sound source (for headphone playback) by applying spatial audio coding concepts.
Chapter 8 expands the spatial audio coding approach to complex auditory scenes and describes how parameter-based virtual sound source generation processes are incorporated in the MPEG Surround standard.
Chapter 9 reviews methods to incorporate user interactivity and flexibility in terms of spatial rendering and mixing. By applying parameterization on individual objects rather than individual channels, several modifications to the auditory scene can be applied at the audio decoder side, such as re-panning, level adjustments, equalization or effects processing of individual objects present within a down-mix.
Chapter 10 describes algorithms to optimize the reproduction of stereo audio on different reproduction systems than the audio material was designed for, such as 5.1 home cinema setups, or wavefield synthesis systems.