AES Vienna 2007: Paper Session P8

P8 - Multichannel Sound - 1

Sunday, May 6, 09:30 — 11:00

Chair: Karl Petermichl

P8-1 5.1 Radio - Too Much Too Soon?—Jon McClintock, APT - Belfast, Ireland, UK
5.1 multichannel audio is arguably the next natural progression for radio. Although digital radio offered an incremental improvement over stereo for listeners, there has not been a fundamental change in radio since the migration from AM to FM. For radio to survive in a highly competitive environment, with an audience that is increasingly judgmental on delivery mediums and content, then as an industry radio needs to embrace 5.1. This paper explores the principles that are vital to the success of multichannel audio for radio, the enabling technology, and outlines various projects that have been undertaken.
Convention Paper 7036 (Purchase now)

P8-2 Wide Listening Area with Exceptional Spatial Sound Quality of a 22.2 Multichannel Sound System—Kimio Hamasaki, Toshiyuki Nishiguchi, Reiko Okumura, Yasushige Nakayama, NHK Science and Technical Research Laboratories - Tokyo, Japan
While issues regarding the sweet spot in 5.1 surround sound have been discussed, a 22.2 multichannel sound system has been developed for ultrahigh-definition TV. One of its features is expansion of the listening area with exceptional sound quality. Although the wideness of listening area was reported in previous papers, its evaluation was performed using only sound clips of a symphony orchestra without a picture. Therefore, subjective evaluations were performed for comparing the impression of various spatial attributes at different listening positions using contents with pictures in both large and small rooms. These evaluations demonstrate that viewers have better impressions of various spatial attributes in a wider listening area with the 22.2 multichannel sound system than with other sound systems.
Convention Paper 7037 (Purchase now)

P8-3 Up-Mixing and Localization—Localization Performance of Up-Mixed Consumer Multichannel Formats—Ben Shirley, University of Salford - Salford, Greater Manchester, UK; Richard Chaffey, AVE Systems - Hersham, Surrey, UK
A number of listening tests were carried out to assess localization of sound in derived surround sound fields. Two up-mixed consumer multichannel formats that use matrix decoding of 3/2 multichannel surround channels to increase the surround channel array (Dolby Pro Logic IIx and DTS Neo:6) were compared to original 3/2 multichannel material to determine the degree of spatial performance improvement. Noise bursts were panned to 11 different locations, 13 subjects participated in the tests, and results were analyzed to assess any improvement in localization in each of the assessed surround systems.
Convention Paper 7038 (Purchase now)