Bilateral-Ambisonic Reproduction by Soundfield Translation

High quality spatial audio reproduction enhances the immersion of spatial music, multimedia, gaming and virtual/augmented reality. Recently, a more efficient binaural reproduction technique based on aligning the head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) and the ambisonic recording to the listener’s bilateral (left and right) ear positions has been proposed, by recording with two spherical microphone arrays (SMAs). In this paper, we propose a method to achieving this bilateral-ambisonic reproduction from the recording of a single low order SMA through the novel re-purposing of sound field translation. The method is a practical solution for binaural reproduction that gains the efficiency and perceptual advantages of using ear-aligned HRTFs, without the trade-off in needing two SMAs. We evaluate the method through an informal MUSHRA listening test and demonstrate its perceptual advantage against conventional binaural reproduction.