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

Paper i 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.