CroPaC-Binaural

A VST plug-in implementation of a parametric Ambisonic decoder for headphones [1], based on the Cross-Pattern Coherence (CroPaC) spatial post-filter. Developed using JUCE and the Spatial_Audio_Framework.

• [1] McCormack, L., and Delikaris-Manias, S. 2019. Parametric First-order Ambisonic Decoding for Headphones Utilising the Cross-Pattern Coherence Algorithm. In Proceedings of the 1st EAA Spatial Audio Signal Processing Symposium, Paris, France, September 6-7th 2019.

Pre-built plug-in

The plug-in may be downloaded from here [Mac OSX (10.10 or higher), Linux (x86_64), and Windows (64-bit)].

Building the plug-in yourself

First clone the repository (including submodules) with:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/leomccormack/CroPaC-Binaural
# or if you have already cloned the repository, update with
git submodule update --init --recursive

Prerequisites

The VST2_SDK should be placed in the 'SDKs' folder like so:

SDKs/VST2_SDK

By default, MacOSX, Linux and Windows (x86_64/amd64) users need to install Intel oneAPI (MKL and IPP) and run the install-safmkl.sh/.bat and install-safipp.sh/.bat scripts found in SDKs/Spatial_Audio_Framework/scripts. Whereas, Raspberry Pi (ARM) users instead require OpenBLAS and LAPACKE libraries:

sudo apt-get install liblapack3 liblapack-dev libopenblas-base libopenblas-dev liblapacke-dev

Note, however, that alternative performance libraries may also be used, with more information provided here.

Linux (x86_64/amd64 and ARM) users must also install the following libraries required by JUCE:

sudo apt-get install x11proto-xinerama-dev libwebkit2gtk-4.0-dev libgtk-3-dev x11proto-xext-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libasound2-dev

Building the plug-in via CMake

The plug-in may be built with CMake (version 3.15 or higher):

mkdir build
cmake -S . -B build -DSAF_ENABLE_SOFA_READER_MODULE=1
cd build
make

Or for Visual Studio users (using x64 Native Tools Command Prompt as administrator):

cmake -S . -B build -G "Visual Studio 15 Win64" -DSAF_ENABLE_SOFA_READER_MODULE=1 
cd build
msbuild ALL_BUILD.vcxproj /p:Configuration=Release /m

Note: when installing CMake on Windows, make sure to allow the intaller to add CMake to the system PATH list or it won't be found.

Building the plug-in without CMake

You may also manually open the .jucer file with the Projucer App and click "Save Project". This will generate Visual Studio (2015/2017) solution files, Xcode project files, Linux Makefiles (amd64), and Raspberry Pi Linux Makefiles (ARM), which are placed in:

audio_plugin/_CroPaC_Binaural_/make/

To generate project files for other IDEs, you may open and configure the included .jucer files accordingly.

Contributors

• Leo McCormack - C/C++ programmer and algorithm design (contact: leo.mccormack(at)aalto.fi)
• Symeon Delikaris-Manias - algorithm design

License

Note that the CroPaC spatial filter was originally proposed in 2013 for single channel output enhancing applications, and is covered by this patent:

• Delikaris-Manias, S, and Pulkki V. "Method for spatial filtering of at least one sound signal, computer readable storage medium and spatial filtering system based on cross-pattern coherence." U.S. Patent Application No. 14/648,379

If you wish to use the algorithm for a commercial product (and not under the GPLv3 license), please contact the authors - see the LICENSE file for details.