Fast perceptual convolution for room reverberation

Abstract

The FIR-based reverberators, which convolve the input sequence with an impulse response modelling the concert hall, have better quality compared to the IIR-based approach. However, the high computational complexity of the FIR-based reverberators limits the applicability to most cost-oriented system. This paper introduces a method that uses perceptual criterion to reduce the complexity of convolution methods for reverberation. Also, an objective measurement criterion is introduced to check the perceptual difference from the reduction. The result has shown that the length of impulse response can be cut off by 60% without affecting the perceptual reverberation quality. The method is well integrated into the existing FFT-based approach is have around 30% speed-up.