A Design Tool to Produce Optimised Ambisonic Decoders

This paper describes a tool for designing Ambisonic surround sound decoders. The tool is highly flexible and provides a decoder designer with powerful features to enable the design of a decoder to their specific requirements. The tool
employs computer search to find decoder parameters that best meet design criteria specified in a multiobjective fitness function. Features include: objective range-removal and importance, even performance by angle, performance that correlates with human spatial resolution, and frequency dependent and independent decoders of different orders.
Performance can be optimised for a single listener or multiple off-centre listeners. The current tool works for 5.0 surround sound however it can be extended to other horizontal-only and 3D configurations. Results are shown that
demonstrate the tool’s capability and flexibility for various scenarios.