Perceptual compensation of the reproduction room for single-source Ambisonics recordings

Ambisonics is a method for capturing and rendering a sound field accurately, assuming that the acoustics of the playback room does not significantly influence the sound field. However, in practice, the acoustics of the playback room may lead to a noticeable degradation in sound quality. This paper proposes a recording and rendering method based on Ambisonics that utilizes a perceptually motivated approach to compensate for the reverberation of the playback room. The recorded direct and reverberant sound field components in the spherical harmonics domain are spectrally and spatially compensated to preserve the relevant auditory cues, including the direction of arrival of the direct sound, the spectral energy of the direct and reverberant sound components, and the interaural coherence across each auditory band. In contrast to the conventional Ambisonics, a flexible number of Ambisonics channels can be used for audio rendering. Listening test results show that the proposed method provides a perceptually accurate rendering of the originally recorded sound field, outperforming both conventional Ambisonics without compensation and even Ambisonics reproduction in a simulated anechoic room. Additionally, perceptual evaluations of listeners seated at the center of the loudspeaker array demonstrate that the method remains robust to head rotation and minor displacements.