Surround signal processing apparatus and video and audio signal reproducing apparatus

Abstract

A surround signal processor reproduces multi-channel audio signals with a pair of left and right rear surround signals via a pair of speakers arranged at front left and right positions roughly symmetrically with respect to a listener. The processor has a sound image localizer with convolvers each of whose filter coefficients Hl and Hr are set based on head transfer functions for each channel of the rear surround signals as follows: Hl=(SF-AK)/(S 2 -A 2 ), where S and A denote transfer functions from each speaker to each listener's ear on the same and the opposite sides of each speaker, respectively; F and K denote transfer functions from positions at which each sound image is required to be localized to each listener's ear on the same and the opposite sides of each speaker, respectively. The localizer adds an output of the filter with filter coefficient Hl for one channel to an output of the other-channel filter with filter coefficient Hr for the other channel and outputs the added outputs as filtered rear left and right surround signals. The left and right rear surround signals passed through the localizer are added to front left and right stereophonic signals to be localized at rear left and right positions roughly symmetrically with respect to the listener, respectively.