Binaural cue coding-part II: schemes and applications

TLDR

Binaural Cue Coding (BCC) is a multichannel spatial rendering method that uses a single down‑mixed audio channel plus side information, building on psychoacoustic fundamentals and stereophonic coding principles introduced in Part I. This paper extends the basic BCC schemes of Part I to more general multichannel scenarios. The authors present multichannel BCC schemes that employ enhanced perceptual spatial cues, a flexible rendering variant with dynamic control, and detail encoder/decoder implementations covering down‑mixing, low‑complexity cue estimation, and side‑information coding. Subjective listening tests demonstrate that the coder implementations perform well, with application examples illustrating their effectiveness.

Abstract

Binaural Cue Coding (BCC) is a method for multichannel spatial rendering based on one down-mixed audio channel and side information. The companion paper (Part I) covers the psychoacoustic fundamentals of this method and outlines principles for the design of BCC schemes. The BCC analysis and synthesis methods of Part I are motivated and presented in the framework of stereophonic audio coding. This paper, Part II, generalizes the basic BCC schemes presented in Part I. It includes BCC for multichannel signals and employs an enhanced set of perceptual spatial cues for BCC synthesis. A scheme for multichannel audio coding is presented. Moreover, a modified scheme is derived that allows flexible rendering of the spatial image at the receiver supporting dynamic control. All aspects of complete BCC encoder and decoder implementations are discussed, such as down-mixing of the input signals, low complexity estimation of the spatial cues, and quantization and coding of the side information. Application examples are given and the performance of the coder implementations are evaluated and discussed based on subjective listening test results.