Using XML Schemas to Create and Encode Interactive 3-D Audio Scenes for Multimedia and Virtual Reality Applications

An object-oriented 3-D sound scene description scheme is proposed. The scheme establishes a way to compose and encode time-varying spatial sound scenes using audio and acoustical objects. This scheme can be used in applications where efficient coding of interactive 3-D sound scenes is needed (e.g. interactive virtual displays and videoconferencing). It can also be used in non-interactive application such as cinema and 3-D music. The scheme offers clear advantages over multi-channel 3-D sound formats regarding scalability and interactivity with the sound-scene because each object has its own set of parameters and can be modified by the end-user at the decoding stage. The object-oriented approach also allows the creation of macro-object descriptors that allow fast and efficient coding of 3-D sound scenes using references to macro-object libraries. The scheme has been implemented in a XML schema and can be used to define 3-D sound scenes in XML format in a standard way.