Perceptual Evaluation of a Mix Presentation for Immersive Audio with IAMF

Carlos Tejeda-Ocampo
Toni Hirvonen
Ema Souza-Blanes
Mahmoud Namazi
AES 158th Convention of the Audio Engineering Society (2025)
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Abstract

Immersive audio mix presentations involve transmitting and rendering several audio elements simultaneously. This enables next-generation applications, such as personalized playback. Using immersive loudspeaker and headphone MUSHRA tests, we investigate bitrate vs. quality for a typical mix presentation use case of a foreground stereo element, plus a background Ambisonics scene. For coding, we use Immersive Audio Model and Formats, a recently
proposed system for Next-Generation Audio. Excellent quality is achieved at 384 kbit/s even with reasonable amount of personalization. We also propose a framework for content-aware analysis that can significantly reduce the bitrate when using underlying legacy audio coding instances.