Omni-binaural recording system for 360° video
Takanori Nishino, Kenta Niwa · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2016
A binaural recording system for 360° video is developed and evaluated. The 360° images can be stitched by using multiple cameras. A binaural recording generally uses a dummy head microphone or binaural recording microphones; however, the orientation of the dummy head needs to be changed depending on the selected view. Binaural recording corresponding to multiple orientations of a dummy head is very difficult and sometimes impossible. Therefore, we propose a binaural recording system that can simultaneously record the sound for the entire corresponding 360° video. The proposed equipment is cylindrical in shape and has four hollows that correspond to the cavity of the concha on the side. Binaural signals corresponding to a desired direction are generated by a weighted average of the recorded signals. Three types of weights, i.e., linear, spline, and optimum weights, were examined. The degree of suitability between the video and generated binaural signals was evaluated using subjective tests. Nine subjects answered that all the weight conditions were acceptable and the proposed system was very interesting and entertaining.