Objective Measurement of Perceived Auditory Quality in Multichannel Audio Compression Coding Systems

Objective quality assessment methods have been used widely for the evaluation of audio coding systems. However, even though many different competing multichannel audio compression coding systems are being developed, most current quality assessment methods only predict results for monaural or stereo signals. A prediction method is introduced that can be used for multichannel audio compression coding systems. The method introduces three variables as measures of the degradations in spatial quality: interaural time difference (ITD) distortion, interaural level difference (ILD) distortion, and interaural cross-correlation coefficient (IACC) distortion. Simultaneously ten model output variables proposed in ITU-R BS. 1387-1 are extracted from binaural signals that are synthesized using head-related transfer functions. The prediction model is trained and verified using results from subjective listening tests of multichannel audio compression coding systems that were performed by participants in the MPEG audio group. This new model, using the three interaural and ten nonspatial statistics, shows encouraging results in the prediction of perceived quality.

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