A Parametric Method for Elevation Control

Abstract

Elevation perception plays a crucial role in binaural audio rendering. In order to synthesize an immersive and natural sound, the binaural room impulse response(BRIR) is widely applied. However, because of the limitation of recording equipment, most of the measured BRIR databases don't have elevation angle. In this paper, we propose a parametric method for elevation control by modeling and modifying the spectral features of the direct components in BRIRs that play dominant roles in elevation perception. We first decompose and extract the significant spectral features contained in the Head Related Transfer Function (HRTF) spectrum that are perceptually important for vertical localization. Based on these features, the direct component of different BRIRs can be modified, with which the elevated entire BRIRs can be generated by combining the late components of original BRIRs. Listening tests reveal that the proposed method can effectively control the elevation perception of the given BRIR database.