Spatial audio is a dynamic and rapidly evolving field, as it is closely linked to advances in computer technology and digital signal processing. The democratization of virtual reality hardware available as consumer devices has moved the field further out of traditional laboratory research, and directly into applied research targeting a wide range of consumers. Advances in Fundamental and Applied Research on Spatial Audio presents a collection of eight peer-reviewed chapters on this exciting area of research. The contributions are organized into three sections: “Acoustic Methodology”, “Perception”, and “Applications”, and cover a range of topics, addressing both headphone- and loudspeaker-based reproductions, offering both methodological overviews and specific case studies.

This open access book tackles the design of 3D spatial interactions in an audio-centered and audio-first perspective, providing the fundamental notions related to the creation and evaluation of immersive sonic experiences. The key elements that enhance the sensation of place in a virtual environment (VE) are: Immersive audio: the computational aspects of the acoustical-space properties of Virutal Reality (VR) technologies Sonic interaction: the human-computer interplay through auditory feedback in VE VR systems: naturally support multimodal integration, impacting different application domains Sonic Interactions in Virtual Environments will feature state-of-the-art research on real-time auralization, sonic interaction design in VR, quality of the experience in multimodal scenarios, and applications. Contributors and editors include interdisciplinary experts from the fields of computer science, engineering, acoustics, psychology, design, humanities, and beyond. Their mission is to shape an emerging new field of study at the intersection of sonic interaction design and immersive media, embracing an archipelago of existing research spread in different audio communities and to increase among the VR communities, researchers, and practitioners, the awareness of the importance of sonic elements when designing immersive environments.

"A comprehensive guide that addresses the theory and practice of spatial audio This book provides readers with the principles and best practices in spatial audio signal processing. It describes how sound fields and their perceptual attributes are captured and analyzed within the time-frequency domain, how essential representation parameters are coded, and how such signals are efficiently reproduced for practical applications. The book is split into four parts starting with an overview of the fundamentals. It then goes on to explain the reproduction of spatial sound before offering an examination of signal-dependent spatial filtering. The book finishes with coverage of both current and future applications and the direction that spatial audio research is heading in. Parametric Time-frequency Domain Spatial Audio focuses on applications in entertainment audio, including music, home cinema, and gamingcovering the capturing and reproduction of spatial sound as well as its generation, transduction, representation, transmission, and perception. This book will teach readers the tools needed for such processing, and provides an overview to existing research. It also shows recent up-to-date projects and commercial applications built on top of the systems. Provides an in-depth presentation of the principles, past developments, state-of-the-art methods, and future research directions of spatial audio technologies Includes contributions from leading researchers in the field Offers MATLAB codes with selected chapters An advanced book aimed at readers who are capable of digesting mathematical expressions about digital signal processing and sound field analysis, Parametric Time-frequency Domain Spatial Audio is best suited for researchers in academia and in the audio industry"--

Sound source localization is an important research field that has attracted researchers' efforts from many technical and biomedical sciences. Sound source localization (SSL) is defined as the determination of the direction from a receiver, but also includes the distance from it. Because of the wave nature of sound propagation, phenomena such as refraction, diffraction, diffusion, reflection, reverberation and interference occur. The wide spectrum of sound frequencies that range from infrasounds through acoustic sounds to ultrasounds, also introduces difficulties, as different spectrum components have different penetration properties through the medium. Consequently, SSL is a complex computation problem and development of robust sound localization techniques calls for different approaches, including multisensor schemes, null-steering beamforming and time-difference arrival techniques. The book offers a rich source of valuable material on advances on SSL techniques and their applications that should appeal to researches representing diverse engineering and scientific disciplines.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th Pacific Rim Conference on Multimedia, PCM 2006, held in Hangzhou, China in November 2006. The 116 revised papers presented cover a wide range of topics, including all aspects of multimedia, both technical and artistic perspectives and both theoretical and practical issues.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th Pacific Rim Conference on Multimedia, PCM 2007, held in Hong Kong, China, in December 2007. The 73 revised full papers and 21 revised posters presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 247 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on image classification and retrieval, the AVS china national standard - technology, applications and products, human face and action recognition, and many more topics.