EP1411498A1 - Method and apparatus for describing sound sources - Google Patents

Method and apparatus for describing sound sources Download PDF

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Publication number
EP1411498A1
EP1411498A1 EP20020022866 EP02022866A EP1411498A1 EP 1411498 A1 EP1411498 A1 EP 1411498A1 EP 20020022866 EP20020022866 EP 20020022866 EP 02022866 A EP02022866 A EP 02022866A EP 1411498 A1 EP1411498 A1 EP 1411498A1
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EP
European Patent Office
Prior art keywords
scene description
audio
audio objects
objects
scene
Prior art date
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EP20020022866
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German (de)
French (fr)
Inventor
Jens Spille
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Deutsche Thomson Brandt GmbH
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Deutsche Thomson Brandt GmbH
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Publication date
Application filed by Deutsche Thomson Brandt GmbH filed Critical Deutsche Thomson Brandt GmbH
Priority to EP20020022866 priority Critical patent/EP1411498A1/en
Priority to ES03757948T priority patent/ES2283815T3/en
Priority to KR1020057006371A priority patent/KR101004836B1/en
Priority to PCT/EP2003/011242 priority patent/WO2004036548A1/en
Priority to JP2005501282A priority patent/JP4751722B2/en
Priority to EP03757948A priority patent/EP1570462B1/en
Priority to CN2003801013259A priority patent/CN1973318B/en
Priority to AU2003273981A priority patent/AU2003273981A1/en
Priority to AT03757948T priority patent/ATE357043T1/en
Priority to DE60312553T priority patent/DE60312553T2/en
Priority to US10/530,881 priority patent/US8437868B2/en
Priority to BRPI0315326A priority patent/BRPI0315326B1/en
Publication of EP1411498A1 publication Critical patent/EP1411498A1/en
Priority to JP2010095347A priority patent/JP2010198033A/en
Withdrawn legal-status Critical Current

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    • G—PHYSICS
    • G10—MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS; ACOUSTICS
    • G10L—SPEECH ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES OR SPEECH SYNTHESIS; SPEECH RECOGNITION; SPEECH OR VOICE PROCESSING TECHNIQUES; SPEECH OR AUDIO CODING OR DECODING
    • G10L19/00—Speech or audio signals analysis-synthesis techniques for redundancy reduction, e.g. in vocoders; Coding or decoding of speech or audio signals, using source filter models or psychoacoustic analysis

Definitions

  • the invention relates to a method and to an apparatus for describing sound sources, especially for sound sources encoded as audio objects according to the MPEG-4 Audio standard.
  • the MPEG-4 Audio standard as defined in ISO/IEC 14496-3 and 14496-1 facilitates a wide variety of applications by supporting the representation of audio objects.
  • the audio objects are decoded separately and composed using the scene description in order to prepare a single soundtrack, which is then played to the listener.
  • BIFS Binary Format for Scene Description
  • AudioBIFS AudioBIFS
  • a scene description is structured hierarchically and can be represented as a graph, wherein leaf-nodes of the graph form the separate objects and the other nodes describes the processing, e.g. positioning, scaling, effects etc..
  • the appearance and behavior of the separate objects can be controlled using parameters within the scene description nodes.
  • the invention is based on the recognition of the following fact.
  • the MPEG-4 Audio standard cannot describe sound sources that have a certain dimension, like a choir, orchestra, sea or rain but only a point source, e.g. a flying insect, or a single instrument. According to listening tests wideness of sound sources is clearly audible, whereby more complicate descriptions like the shape of the audio object is not necessary.
  • a problem to be solved by the invention is to allow the description of the wideness of sound sources that have a certain dimension in a simple and backwards compatible way.
  • the inventive method allows to describe sound sources, which are encoded as separate audio objects.
  • the arrangement of the sound sources in a sound scene is described by a scene description.
  • the audio objects are decoded separately and a single soundtrack is composed from the decoded audio objects using said scene description.
  • an audio spatial diffuseness node is defined within the scene description.
  • Figure 1 shows an illustration of the functionality of the inventive AudioSpatialDiffuseness node.
  • This AudioSpatialDiffuseness node will have a children field as input and will produce the same number of channels (numChan) as output. Branches that are connected to an upper level branch are called children in MPEG-4 terms. It can be inserted in each branch of the audio subtree, without changing any other node.
  • a diffuseSelection field will allow the scene author to control the diffuseness algorithms, so that each AudioSpatialDiffuseness node will produce a different output.
  • a diffuseness node will virtual produce N different signals, but only one real signal is passed through to the output of the node, signaled by the diffuseSelect field.
  • Other fields like a decorrelation strength (decorrStrength) etc. could be added to the node, if required.
  • each channel should be diffused separately.
  • Figure 2 depicts an Audio Scene for a Line Sound Source.
  • the scene author has to decide how many and at which position the decorrelated multiple point sound sources will be located.
  • the advantage is, that the content author has much more control over the shape effect. He can also use intensity and direction of each point source as well as using the AudioDelay and AudioEffects node for certain Sound nodes to manipulate the effect. It is still possible for the renderer to reduce the computational power by passing the scene tree to look for identical AudioSources.

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  • Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
  • Computational Linguistics (AREA)
  • Signal Processing (AREA)
  • Health & Medical Sciences (AREA)
  • Audiology, Speech & Language Pathology (AREA)
  • Human Computer Interaction (AREA)
  • Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
  • Acoustics & Sound (AREA)
  • Multimedia (AREA)
  • Stereophonic System (AREA)

Abstract

The MPEG-4 Audio standard as defined in ISO/IEC 14496-1 and - 3 facilitates a wide variety of applications by supporting the representation of audio objects. For the combination of the audio objects additional information - the so-called scene description - determines the placement in space and time and is transmitted together with the coded audio objects.
For playback the audio objects are decoded separately and composed using the scene description in order to prepare a single soundtrack, which is then played to the listener. A scene description is structured hierarchically and can be represented as a graph, wherein nodes of the graph form the separate objects. The appearance and behaviour of the separate objects can be controlled using parameters within the scene description nodes. For describing the wideness of a sound source an audio diffuseness node is defined within the scene description.

Description

  • The invention relates to a method and to an apparatus for describing sound sources, especially for sound sources encoded as audio objects according to the MPEG-4 Audio standard.
    • Background
  • The MPEG-4 Audio standard as defined in ISO/IEC 14496-3 and 14496-1 facilitates a wide variety of applications by supporting the representation of audio objects. For the combination of the audio objects additional information - the so-called scene description - determines the placement in space and time and is transmitted together with the coded audio objects.
    For playback the audio objects are decoded separately and composed using the scene description in order to prepare a single soundtrack, which is then played to the listener.
  • For efficiency, the MPEG-4 Systems standard ISO/IEC 14496-1defines a way to encode the scene description in a binary representation, the so-called Binary Format for Scene Description (BIFS). Correspondingly, audio scenes are described using so-called AudioBIFS.
  • A scene description is structured hierarchically and can be represented as a graph, wherein leaf-nodes of the graph form the separate objects and the other nodes describes the processing, e.g. positioning, scaling, effects etc.. The appearance and behavior of the separate objects can be controlled using parameters within the scene description nodes.
    • Invention
  • The invention is based on the recognition of the following fact. Currently the MPEG-4 Audio standard cannot describe sound sources that have a certain dimension, like a choir, orchestra, sea or rain but only a point source, e.g. a flying insect, or a single instrument. According to listening tests wideness of sound sources is clearly audible, whereby more complicate descriptions like the shape of the audio object is not necessary.
  • Therefore, a problem to be solved by the invention is to allow the description of the wideness of sound sources that have a certain dimension in a simple and backwards compatible way.
  • This problem is solved by the method disclosed in claim 1 and the corresponding apparatus in claim 4.
  • In principle, the inventive method allows to describe sound sources, which are encoded as separate audio objects. The arrangement of the sound sources in a sound scene is described by a scene description. For playback the audio objects are decoded separately and a single soundtrack is composed from the decoded audio objects using said scene description. For describing the wideness of a sound source an audio spatial diffuseness node is defined within the scene description.
  • Advantageous additional embodiments of the invention are disclosed in the respective dependent claims.
    • Drawings
  • Exemplary embodiments of the invention are described with reference to the accompanying drawings, which show in
    • Fig. 1
    the illustration of the functionality of the AudioSpatialDiffuseness mode;
    Fig. 2
    an Audio Scene for a Line Sound Source.
    Exemplary embodiments
  • Figure 1 shows an illustration of the functionality of the inventive AudioSpatialDiffuseness node.
  • This AudioSpatialDiffuseness node will have a children field as input and will produce the same number of channels (numChan) as output. Branches that are connected to an upper level branch are called children in MPEG-4 terms. It can be inserted in each branch of the audio subtree, without changing any other node.
  • A diffuseSelection field will allow the scene author to control the diffuseness algorithms, so that each AudioSpatialDiffuseness node will produce a different output. In practice a diffuseness node will virtual produce N different signals, but only one real signal is passed through to the output of the node, signaled by the diffuseSelect field. Other fields like a decorrelation strength (decorrStrength) etc. could be added to the node, if required.
    Figure 00040001
  • In the case of numChan greater than one each channel should be diffused separately.
  • Figure 2 depicts an Audio Scene for a Line Sound Source. By using this proposal the scene author has to decide how many and at which position the decorrelated multiple point sound sources will be located. The advantage is, that the content author has much more control over the shape effect. He can also use intensity and direction of each point source as well as using the AudioDelay and AudioEffects node for certain Sound nodes to manipulate the effect.
    It is still possible for the renderer to reduce the computational power by passing the scene tree to look for identical AudioSources.
    Figure 00040002
    Figure 00050001

Claims (4)

  1. Method for describing sound sources, which are encoded as separate audio objects, wherein the arrangement of the sound sources in a sound scene is described by a scene description, and wherein for playback the audio objects are decoded separately and a single soundtrack is composed from the decoded audio objects using said scene description, characterized by an audio diffuseness node which is defined within the scene description for describing the wideness of a sound source.
  2. Method according to claim 1, wherein a diffuse selection field will allow the scene author to control the diffuseness algorithms.
  3. Method according to claim 1 or 2, wherein a decorrelation strength field will allow author to control the strenght of the decorrelation.
  4. Apparatus for performing a method according to any of claims 1 to 3.
EP20020022866 2002-10-14 2002-10-14 Method and apparatus for describing sound sources Withdrawn EP1411498A1 (en)

Priority Applications (13)

Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title
EP20020022866 EP1411498A1 (en) 2002-10-14 2002-10-14 Method and apparatus for describing sound sources
AU2003273981A AU2003273981A1 (en) 2002-10-14 2003-10-10 Method for coding and decoding the wideness of a sound source in an audio scene
AT03757948T ATE357043T1 (en) 2002-10-14 2003-10-10 METHOD FOR ENCODING AND DECODING THE WIDTH OF A SOUND SOURCE IN AN AUDIO SCENE
PCT/EP2003/011242 WO2004036548A1 (en) 2002-10-14 2003-10-10 Method for coding and decoding the wideness of a sound source in an audio scene
JP2005501282A JP4751722B2 (en) 2002-10-14 2003-10-10 Method for encoding and decoding the wideness of a sound source in an audio scene
EP03757948A EP1570462B1 (en) 2002-10-14 2003-10-10 Method for coding and decoding the wideness of a sound source in an audio scene
CN2003801013259A CN1973318B (en) 2002-10-14 2003-10-10 Method and device for coding and decoding the presentation of an audio signal
ES03757948T ES2283815T3 (en) 2002-10-14 2003-10-10 METHOD FOR CODING AND DECODING THE WIDTH OF A SOUND SOURCE IN AN AUDIO SCENE.
KR1020057006371A KR101004836B1 (en) 2002-10-14 2003-10-10 Methods for coding and decoding the wideness of sound sources in audio scenes
DE60312553T DE60312553T2 (en) 2002-10-14 2003-10-10 PROCESS FOR CODING AND DECODING THE WIDTH OF A SOUND SOURCE IN AN AUDIOSCENE
US10/530,881 US8437868B2 (en) 2002-10-14 2003-10-10 Method for coding and decoding the wideness of a sound source in an audio scene
BRPI0315326A BRPI0315326B1 (en) 2002-10-14 2003-10-10 Method for encoding and decoding the width of a sound source in an audio scene
JP2010095347A JP2010198033A (en) 2002-10-14 2010-04-16 Method for coding and decoding wideness of sound source in audio scene

Applications Claiming Priority (1)

Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title
EP20020022866 EP1411498A1 (en) 2002-10-14 2002-10-14 Method and apparatus for describing sound sources

Publications (1)

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EP1411498A1 true EP1411498A1 (en) 2004-04-21

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Cited By (1)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
CN116110387A (en) * 2022-12-19 2023-05-12 达闼科技（北京）有限公司 A multi-modal information transmission method, device, equipment and storage medium

Non-Patent Citations (3)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Title
BAUER S ET AL: "DER MULTIMEDIA-STANDARD MPEG-4 UND SEINE ANWENDUNGEN IM MINT-PROJEKT", FERNMELDE-INGENIEUR, BAD WINSHEIM, DE, vol. 52, no. 11/12, November 1998 (1998-11-01), pages 43 - 64, XP000997456, ISSN: 0015-010X *
CONVENOR: "Coding of moving pictures and audio, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11/N4907", ORGANISATION INTERNATIONALE DE NORMALISATION, July 2002 (2002-07-01), Klagenfurt, DE, XP002239259 *
PURNHAGEN H.: "An overview of MPEG-4 audio version 2", AES 17TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON HIGH QUALITY AUDIO CODING, 2 September 1999 (1999-09-02) - 5 September 1999 (1999-09-05), Italy, XP002239258 *

Cited By (1)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
CN116110387A (en) * 2022-12-19 2023-05-12 达闼科技（北京）有限公司 A multi-modal information transmission method, device, equipment and storage medium

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