Recordings of a Loudspeaker Orchestra With Multichannel Microphone Arrays for the Evaluation of Spatial Audio Methods

For live broadcasting of speech, music, or other audio content, multichannel microphone array recordings of the sound field can be used to render and stream dynamic binaural signals in real time. For a comparative physical and perceptual evaluation of conceptually different binaural rendering techniques, recordings are needed in which all other factors affecting the sound (such as the sound radiation of the sources, the room acoustic environment, and the recording position) are kept constant. To provide such a recording, the sound field of an 18-channel loudspeaker orchestra fed by anechoic recordings of a chamber orchestra was captured in two rooms with nine different receivers. In addition, impulse responses were recorded for each sound source and receiver. The anechoic audio signals, the full loudspeaker orchestra recordings, and all measured impulse responses are available with open access in the Spatially Oriented Format for Acoustics (SOFA 2.1, AES69-2022) format. The article presents the recording process and processing chain as well as the structure of the generated database.