Low complexity crosstalk cancellation algorithm for consumer audio systems

Abstract

Over the past decade, spatial audio awareness evolved into an in-demand feature in audio entertainment. The addition of sound source locations to, for instance, movies or music adds a level of auditory envelopment and spatial awareness to the audio experience. Expensive setups present in, for instance, cinema's, are able to create this envelopment by means of a large set of loudspeakers with which the desired sound fields are created. Creating this spatial envelopment in practical consumer living rooms or home cinema setups proves to be a more challenging task due to the impractical amount of loudspeakers required. To create the audio envelopment with a small amount of loudspeakers, crosstalk cancellation can be used. Crosstalk cancellation as posed in literature is, however, not robust enough to be used in practical appliances. The main cause of these bad characteristics is the objective cost function it optimizes which results in an ill-posed problem. In this thesis, the crosstalk cancellation problem is relaxed by aiming for perceptually sufficient results instead of aiming for objectively optimal results. The human auditory system has its limitations in both the perception of audio and localization of audio sources. Exploiting the limitations of the auditory system generates mathematical freedom that can be used to construct a more robust and stable crosstalk cancellation algorithm. This thesis provides the first steps towards the incorporation of audio perception in the domain of crosstalk cancellation and audio envelopment with a limited amount of loudspeakers.