Exploiting randomness in acoustic impulse responses to achieve headphone compensation through deconvolution

Area of Science:

• Audio signal processing
• Acoustics
• Digital signal processing

Background:

• Headphone equalization is crucial for accurate audio reproduction.
• Existing methods often involve complex, computationally intensive filters.
• Spatial audio applications require precise binaural impulse response processing.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present an efficient headphone/earphone equalization method.
• To reduce computational complexity compared to traditional approaches.
• To enable effective application in spatial audio systems.

Main Methods:

• Deconvolution of headphone impulse response from acoustic filters.
• Utilizing random coefficient polynomial zero-clustering theory for impulse response simplification.
• Comparing homomorphic and least squares methods against traditional inverse filters.

Main Results:

• Achieved significant reduction in computational effort.
• Demonstrated performance comparable to separate least squares compensators.
• Observed superior performance in some cases despite reduced complexity.

Conclusions:

• The proposed deconvolution-based equalization is computationally efficient.
• It provides effective headphone equalization for various audio processing tasks.
• This method offers a practical advancement for spatial audio and beyond.