Page 8 - 3GPP_Highlights_Issue_5_WEB

TECHNICAL HIGHLIGHTS

IVAS - TAKING 3GPP

VOICE AND AUDIO

SERVICES TO A NEW

IMMERSIVE LEVEL

By Stefan Bruhn (Dolby Laboratories, Inc.), Markus Multrus (Fraunhofer IIS),
Imre Varga (Qualcomm Incorporated, 3GPP SA4 Audio SWG Co-Chair)

It is almost established practice that
3GPP standardizes a new codec for 3GPP Spatial audio capture
voice service every decade. The driver and presentation
for that is the never-ending demand for
enhanced QoE - while maintaining highly
competitive service efficiency. Each time,
from Adaptive Multi Rate (AMR) over
AMR-WB to Enhanced Voice Services
(EVS), a quantum leap in service quality
offered has been achieved. Current
standardization work is taking place
against the background of an upswing
in immersive media services, such as the
spatial or ‘surround’ audio experience
which is already well established for
streaming professionally
generated content.
At the same time, advanced visual
rendering systems with large and curved
TV screens, (head-tracked) VR gears and
AR glasses are enabling the immersion of
the user into the rendered Audio Visual
(AV) scene.
What is currently lacking is a codec
enabling the sharing of immersive audio
experiences from highly mobile and
uncontrolled capture environments
and the rendering of those experiences
in other virtually unconstrained
environments using headsets, earbuds
or multi-speaker systems with custom
loudspeaker configurations – in give User Equipment (UE) manufacturers complexity) while taking them to the next
environments such as homes, cars or and service providers the possibility to – immersive – level.
conference rooms. monitor or influence the standardization For this, new features will be added:
3GPP SA4 is now closing this gap with process and to make sure that the Immersive audio formats, such as
the standardization of its codec for time-to-market of IVAS-enabled new channel-based audio (including
Immersive Voice and Audio Services immersive services and products stereo and common multi-channel
(IVAS). is minimized. configurations from 5.1 up to 7.1+4),
IVAS will not only introduce immersion binaural audio, scene-based audio (i.e.
into the traditional voice service, it will Features and Use-Cases Ambisonics up to 3rd order) and object-
also address the demand for more based audio. Also, IVAS will support
general immersive multimedia services. The IVAS codec will be built upon and be Metadata-assisted spatial audio (MASA)
Service applications include, but are backwards compatible with the successful – a novel, parametric spatial audio
not limited to, conversational voice, EVS codec. Thus, a single universal codec format optimized for direct UE pick-up
multi-stream teleconferencing, VR will be provided incorporating the quality without loss, instead of converting to
conversational and user generated live and performance attributes of EVS (such one of the other immersive formats. In
and non-live content streaming, AR/MR. as excellent audio quality, low delay, order to enable playout on a multitude
of devices, a rendering solution and an
This article is written to draw attention to appropriate range of bit rates, high-quality interface to an external rendering will be
this important standardization work, to error resiliency, practical implementation made available, including head-tracked
rendering.
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08 3GP P Highlights n e w slet t er