Stereo Goes Mobile: Spatial Enhancement for Short-distance Loudspeaker Setups

Modern mobile, hand-held devices offer enhanced capabilities for video and sound reproduction. Nevertheless, major restrictions imposed by their limited size render them inconvenient for headset-free stereo sound reproduction, since the corresponding short-distant loudspeakers placement physically narrows the perceived stereo sound localization potential. In this work, we aim at evaluating a spatial enhancement technique for small-size mobile devices. This technique extracts the original panning information from an original stereo recording and spatially extends it using appropriate binaural rendering. A sequence of subjective tests performed shows that the derived spatial perceptual impression is significantly improved in all test cases considered, rendering the proposed technique an attractive approach towards headset-free mobile audio reproduction.