Immersive Sound

Chapter 8

Object-Based Audio

Nicolas Tsingos

Introduction

Audio content production or interactive rendering is traditionally based on the manipulation of sound objects. We define sound objects as audio waveforms (audio elements) and associated parameters (metadata) that embody the artistic intent by specifying the translation from the audio elements to loudspeaker signals. Sound objects generally use monophonic audio tracks that have been recorded or synthesized through a process of sound design. These sound elements can be further manipulated, e.g., in a digital audio workstation (DAW), so as to be positioned in a horizontal plane around the listener, or in more recent systems in full three-dimensional (3D) space (see Chapter 6), using positional ...