Applying primary ambient extraction for immersive spatial audio reproduction

Spatial audio reproduction is essential to create a natural listening experience for digital media. Majority of the legacy audio contents are in channel-based format, which is very particular on the desired playback system. Considering the diversity of today´s playback systems, the quality of reproduced sound scenes degrades significantly when mismatches between the audio content and the playback system occur. An active sound control approach is required to take the playback system into consideration. Primary ambient extraction (PAE) is an emerging technique that can be employed to solve this pressing issue and achieve an efficient, flexible, and immersive spatial audio reproduction. In this paper, we will review the recent advancements in PAE. A unified framework to extend existing PAE approaches is proposed to improve the robustness of PAE when dealing with complex audio signals in practical situations. Various practical issues on implementing PAE in spatial audio applications are discussed. Objective and subjective evaluations are conducted to validate the feasibility of applying PAE in spatial audio reproduction.