Combined object-based audio and MASA format for enhanced spatial mobile communication

The new 3GPP IVAS codec for immersive voice and audio communication services in 5G networks supports a variety of spatial audio formats beyond mono and stereo voice and audio, and even combinations of them. This paper presents the OMASA combined audio format which provides a joint coding of object-based audio and metadata-assisted spatial audio (MASA). It enables immersive communication experiences, e.g., in teleconferencing scenarios where a mobile end-device captures the environmental audio in MASA format while individual talkers’ voices are captured with their own microphones as separate audio objects. This paper describes coding methods newly developed and optimized depending on the available bitrate and the number of audio objects to efficiently deliver a 3D audio experience at a wide OMASA bitrate range from 13.2 kbps to 512 kbps. The benefits of the presented joint coding of audio formats over separate coding at the same bitrates are presented in terms of subjective evaluation and computational resources.