Stereo to mono down-mix is a key component of parametric stereo coding to drastically reduce the bit rate, but at the same time it is also an irreversible process that is a potential source of undesirable artifacts. This paper aims to reduce typical distortions induced by down-mixing, such as signal cancellation, comb filtering or unnatural instabilities. Two down-mixing methods are designed with different trade-offs between natural timbre and energy preservation based on simple rules that ensure low complexity. The results of a listening test show that both the proposed methods have a substantial advantage over the passive down-mix, while being very competitive compared to more computationally demanding active down-mixing approaches. The proposed methods are, therefore, particularly well suited to low complexity stereo coding schemes, such as those required for communication applications.

Authors: Maben, Pallavi; Borß, Christian; Edler, Bernd; Fuchs, Guillaume
Affiliations: Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS, Erlangen, Germany; Ittiam Systems Pvt. Ltd., Bengaluru, India(See document for exact affiliation information.)
AES Convention: 152 (May 2022) Paper Number: 10578
Publication Date: May 2, 2022
Subject: Audio Synthesis & Audio Effects

Download Now (1.5 MB)

This paper is Open Access which means you can download it for free.

No AES members have commented on this paper yet.

Subscribe to this discussion

To be notified of new comments on this paper you can subscribe to this RSS feed. Forum users should login to see additional options.

Start a discussion!

If you would like to start a discussion about this paper and are an AES member then you can login here:
Username:
Password:

If you are not yet an AES member and have something important to say about this paper then we urge you to join the AES today and make your voice heard. You can join online today by clicking here.