The design of HOA irregular decoders based on the optimal symmetrical virtual microphone response

Ambisonic decoder for irregular speaker arrays could be derived by optimization techniques. In terms of higher order reproduction system, the optimization program is hard to be guided to a large number of decoder coefficients. This paper describes a new method for higher order decoder based on the optimal symmetrical virtual microphone response (OSVMR). In the proposed method, the number of the decoder coefficients is reduced and the optimal symmetrical polar pattern of speaker feeds is obtained. The binaural evaluation demonstrates that the proposed method is found to be significantly better than reference methods on interaural time difference (ITD) and interaural level difference (ILD).