Binaural perception of stereo noise bursts as a function of burst duration and degree of interchannel coherence

Abstract

Amplitude panning for virtual sound source rendering in stereo and multi-channel audio reproduction is well established. Binaural fusion can be represented by vector addition of the acoustic wave propagation vectors from individual speakers; however, this applies only to stereo signals with perfect interchannel coherence and does not provide a description of the perceived sound image when the interchannel coherence is less than complete. Listening tests show that the stereo image formed by continuous incoherent noise fills the space between the loudspeakers; however, for a single short noise burst (a few milliseconds long) the virtual source collapses to a single point in space with its location determined by the position of the maximum of the interchannel correlation function. Concatenation of an ensemble of short noise bursts with a distribution of interchannel correlation function maxima creates a long noise burst displaying a broad peak in its interchannel correlation function; the location and width ...