Spatially-sampled binaural room impulse responses

SBSBRIR is a freely-available binaural room impulse response (BRIR) dataset, measured at the University of Salford’s ITU-R BS.1116-compliant listening room. The dataset includes measurements for 12 loudspeakers, positioned at ear-height, using a head-and-torso simulator (HATS) at 15 different positions in the listening area. The HATS was rotated horizontally in 2 degree steps at each position. The dataset can be used in the subjective and objective evaluation of domestic spatial audio reproduction.

This dataset is available from the University of Salford Institutional Repository.

This paper was written in collaboration with the following authors: Darius Satongar (PhD, University of Salford), Chris Pike (BBC R&D), Prof. Yiu Lam (University of Salford).

It was presented in the paper A Library of Binaural Room Impulse Responses and Sound Scenes for Evaluation of Spatial Audio Systems which was presented at the conference DAGA 2014 in Oldenburg, Germany.

Downloads

Licence

Unless otherwise stated, all SBSBRIR data is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.

BRIR Data

The BRIR data is available to download in several different formats:

WAV files 720-channel WAV files. Can be used directly with the SoundScape Renderer, an open-source spatial audio rendering software, in Binaural Room Scanning mode.

SOFA Files Download in SOFA format, an open format for reading, saving, and describing spatially oriented data of acoustic systems.

MIRO Files Download in MIRO format, an object-oriented representation of measured impulse responses for MATLAB.

SoundScape Renderer Scene Examples

SSR Scenes Some example SSR scenes have been created, demonstrating how these BRIRs can be used with the SSR software to simulate loudspeaker playback in the University of Salford listening room.

Usage

Pre-Requisites

Several external software resources can be installed in order to make use of this dataset.

SOFA API MO In order to use the SOFA files, you need to download and install the SOFA API for MATLAB/Octave. You therefore also need MATLAB/Octave installed. SOFA APIs for other platforms are in development. The convention MultiSpeakerBRIR is used, which is available from version 6 of the SOFA specifications.

MIRO class definition Measured Impulse Response Object class, for object-oriented representation of measured impulse responses in MATLAB. Includes useful methods for applying headphone correction filters and rendering to 720-channel WAV files for use in SoundScapeRenderer (the available WAV files were created using this method). This class must be in your MATLAB path to properly load the SBSBRIR MIRO objects.

SoundScape Renderer SoundScape Renderer is an open-source spatial audio rendering software application. The SBSBRIR data can be used with SoundScape Renderer's Binaural Room Scanning renderer to simulate loudspeakers in real-time.

Simulating the University of Salford Listening Room

SoundScape Renderer's Binaural Room Scanning renderer can be run using the SBSBRIR data, using one of the provided example scenes, e.g.:

ssr-brs sbsbrir-centre-ITU5.asd

This creates a binaural simulation of loudspeakers in the University of Salford's listening room. A head tracking system can be used with the SoundScape Renderer to give dynamic BRS rendering.

Reference

Documentation

Poster from DAGA 2014 Initial presentation of this dataset at the 40th Annual German Congress on Acoustics in Oldenburg.

Measurement Layout Diagram Diagram of the measurement layout.

External Resources

SOFA project Spatially-Oriented Format for Acoustics

MIRO class From the Audio Group at Cologne University of Applied Sciences

Recommendation ITU-R BS.1116 Recommends methods for the subjective assessment of small impairments in audio systems including multichannel sound systems. Provides required room specifications for such tests.

SoundScape Renderer A tool for real-time spatial audio reproduction providing a variety of rendering algorithms.

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