Spatialized Audio and Hybrid Video Conferencing: Where Should Voices be Positioned for People in the Room and Remote Headset Users?

Hybrid video calls include attendees in a conference room with loudspeakers and remote attendees using headsets, each with dif- ferent options for rendering sound spatially. Two studies explored the listener experience with spatial audio in video calls. One study examined the in-room experience using loudspeakers, comparing among spatialization algorithms spreading voices out horizontally. A second study compared varying degrees of horizontal separation of binaurally rendered voices for a remote participant using a head- set. In-room participants preferred the widest spatialization over monophonic, stereo, and stereo-binary audio in metrics related to intelligibility and helpfulness. Remote participants preferred differ- ent widths of the audio stage depending on the number of voices. In both studies, rendering sound spatially increased performance in speech stream identification. Results indicate spatial audio bene- fits for in-room and remote attendees in video calls, although the in-room attendees accepted a wider audio stage than remote users.