Initial Developments of an Objective Method for the Prediction of Basic Audio Quality for Surround Audio Recordings

This paper describes the development of the objective method for the prediction of the Basic Audio Quality (BAQ) of bandlimited or down-mixed surround audio recordings. A number of physical parameters, including interaural cross-correlation coefficient and spectral descriptors, were extracted from the recordings and used in a linear regression model to predict BAQ scores obtained from listening tests. The results showed a high correlation between the predicted scores and those obtained from the listening test, with the average error of prediction being smaller than 10%. Although the method was originally developed for 5-channel surround recordings, after some modifications it can be upgraded to any number of audio channels.

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