ABSTRACT
In recent years, many spatial audio formats have come to the market. Some are related to the cinema industry (5.1, 6.1, 7.1, 10.2, 22.2, ATMOS) and other more advanced formats, such as Higher Order Ambisonics (HOS) and Wave Field Synthesis (WFS), are typically intended for different purposes. However, these systems have not penetrated the consumer market as quickly and deeply as expected. This is due in large part to the explosion of mobile devices employed for personal audio, which has resulted in headphones being the most common listening device for music or other audiovisual material. This talk will analyze the state of the art in multichannel audio reproduction systems, including wave-field accurate systems, such as HOS and WFS, as well as solutions based on binaural audio and HRTF, and consider the outlook for these systems. Finally, developments in these areas from my laboratory in the iTEAM Institute at the Technical University of Valencia will be presented.
ABOUT JOSÉ J. LOPEZ
Institute for Telecommunication and Multimedia Applications (iTEAM).
Technical University of Valencia
Dr. Jose J. Lopez's research interests encompass audio, acoustics and multimedia. His current research activity is centered on digital audio processing in the areas of spatial sound, wave-field synthesis (WFS), physical modeling of room acoustics, distributed mode loudspeakers (DML), efficient filtering structures for audio and loudspeaker correction, signal processing algorithms, and development of real time multimedia software. He has published over 150 papers in international technical journals and conferences in the fields of audio and acoustics, and has led many research projects related to audio. He has been a pioneer in the development of Wave-Field Synthesis in Spain and developed one of the largest WFS prototypes in Europe. He has also contributed to the development of large multi-actuator panels for WFS with video projection. He has worked for Telefonica (the main phone company in Spain) in different research projects related to high-realism videoconferencing, advanced teleconferencing for mobile devices and tracking of subjects by sound. Two of these developments were shown at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in 2011 and 2014.
Dr. Lopez served as secretary of the Spanish Section of the Audio Engineering Society for 4 years, and is now part of the AES Spanish committee.