Spatial audio coding and enhancement address the growing commercial need to store and distribute multichannel audio and to render content optimally on arbitrary reproduction systems. In this paper, we discuss a spatial analysis-synthesis scheme which applies principal component analysis to an STFT-domain representation of the original audio to separate it into primary and ambient components, which are then respectively analyzed for cues that describe the spatial percept of the audio scene on a per-tile basis; these cues are used by the synthesis to render the audio appropriately on the available playback system. The proposed framework can be tailored for robust spatial audio coding, or it can be applied directly to enhancement scenarios where there are no rate constraints on the intermediate spatial data and audio representation.

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This paper gives an overview of the principles and methods for synthesizing complex 3D sound scenes by processing multiple individual source signals. Signalprocessing techniques for directional sound encoding and rendering over loudspeakers or headphones are reviewed, as well as algorithms and interface models for synthesizing and dynamically controling room reverberation and distance effects. A real-time modular spatial-sound-processing software system, called Spat, is presented. It allows reproducing and controling the localization of sound sources in three dimensions and the reverberation of sounds in an existing or virtual space. A particular aim of the Spatialisateur project is to provide direct and computationally efficient control over perceptually relevant parameters describing the interaction of each sound source with the virtual space, irrespective of the chosen reproduction format over loudspeakers or headphones. The advantages of this approach are illustrated in practical contexts, including professional audio, computer music, multimodal immersive simulation systems, and architectural acoustics.

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