Instrumental Evaluation of Sensor Self-Noise in Binaural Rendering of Spherical Microphone Array Signals

Paper in proceeding, 2020

Spherical microphone arrays are used to capture spatial sound fields, which can then be rendered via headphones. Insight into perceptual properties of sensor self-noise is valuable in the design and construction process of such arrays. We use the Real-Time Spherical Array Renderer (ReTiSAR) to analyze the frequency-dependent white-noise-gain, i.e. propagation of wanted and unwanted signals through the processing pipeline. In this contribution, we demonstrate an instrumental evaluation for a large set of array and rendering configurations. Latter strongly influence the rendered spectral balance and overall level of spatially uniformly distributed self-noise. Additionally, a dependency on head rotation yielding a change in the reproduced coloration is confirmed for the case of spatially non-uniform noise.