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A Balanced Stereo Widening Network for Headphones

The purpose of a stereo widening network for headphones is to compensate for the non-ideal listening conditions experienced when listening to material mixed for playback over two widely spaced loudspeakers. Our network is balanced in the sense that there is a constraint on the sum of the magnitude responses of the cross-talk (left input to right output, and right input to left output) and the direct paths (left input to left output, and right input to right output). In order to ensure that no noticable spectral colouration is added to the original sound only frequencies below 2kHz are processed. This ensures a very natural characteristic of the reproduced sound, and it makes the stereo widening algorithm well suited for applications to high-quality digital source material. A 'structurally balanced' implementation makes it possible to run the stereo widening network very efficiently in fixed-point precision.

Author: Kirkeby, Ole
Affiliation: Speech and Audio Systems Laboratory, Nokia Research Center, Helsinki, Finland
AES Conference:22nd International Conference: Virtual, Synthetic, and Entertainment Audio (June 2002)
Paper Number:000249 Import into BibTeX
Subject:Virtual, Synthetic and Entertainment Audio

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E-Library Location: (CD aes19)   /intl2002/2002es06/000249.pdf

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