MPEG Spatial Audio Object Coding?The ISO/MPEG Standard for Efficient Coding of Interactive Audio Scenes

In 2010 the ISO/MPEG Audio standardization group issued the Spatial Audio Object Coding (SAOC) specification to define technology for parametric low bit-rate coding of audio object signals with a mono or stereo downmix. This paper provides an overview of MPEG SAOC technology, discussing recent verification tests. The authors examine operation modes for typical application scenarios by taking advantage of object-based processing. Most important, SAOC enables transmission of multi-object signals at data rates of the same order of magnitude as those used to represent two-channel audio. The important application scenarios are envisaged to be high-quality spatial teleconferencing, personal audio, interactive gaming, and rich media. Because the SAOC representation is independent of any particular loudspeaker setup, SAOC signals can be rendered efficiently on either a target loudspeaker configuration or portable device.