Headphone or earbud listening scenarios span from the home or office to mobile and automotive environments, with audio source content formats including two-channel stereo, multi-channel surround, immersive or object-based material. Post-processing methods have been developed with the intent of restoring, during headphone playback, the spatial audio cues experienced in natural or loudspeaker listening, remediating known effects of headphone-mediated audio reproduction: the perceived localization of sounds in or near the head, accompanied by timbre or balance distortions and spatial image blurring or warping. The intended benefits include alleviating listening fatigue and cognitive load. In this E-Brief presentation, we review previously reported binaural audio post-processing methods and consider a strategy emphasizing minimal signal modification, applicable to enhancing conventionally produced stereo recordings.
This is a work-in-progress report on an investigation that we plan to report on in a future paper. The slides and audio demonstrations are posted at izotope.com/tech/aes_extern.
