Spatial compression of multi-channel audio signals using inverse filters

A large number of transmission audio channels are necessary for reproduction of a sound field based on Huygens principle. A method is proposed for spatial compression of the multi-channel audio signals. The signals are compressed by convolving them with the inverse filter of the room impulse response to reduce the number of transmission channels to the number of source signals. Then the source signals are transmitted to reproduce the sound field by convolving them with the impulse response. The compression method is evaluated using the signal-to-noise ratio and a subjective assessment. Experimental results show that SNR between a source signal and an extracted signal is more than 40dB and that there is no significant difference of the directional perception due to compression.