Interactive Teleconferencing Combining Spatial Audio Object Coding and DirAC Technology

In teleconferencing applications with multiple participants, it would be desirable to create the perception of a real meeting with each speaker in a specific perceived location. This paper describes how Directional Audio Coding (DirAC) can be used as a front end to MPEG Spatial Audio Object Coding (SAOC) to achieve that goal. A novel parameter transcoder provides an efficient way of combining the two technologies. Reproduction of the virtual environment, where each talker exists in a virtual location, can be achieved using headphones or loudspeakers. Subjective tests on different simple and optimized versions were performed, many of which were rated as "good" on the MUSHRA scale.