Interaural Crosstalk
November 14, 2007
Crosstalk in sound reproduction is a phenomenon in which the undesired leakage of sound from one instrument into a microphone placed in front of another musical instrument or singer. A common example is the leakage of the high-pitched, heavily-amplified sound of the lead guitar into the microphones for other instruments.
When there is undesired coupling of sound from one channel into another channel, it is called Interaural Crosstalk.
Interaural Crosstalk plays very important role is sound reproduction, especially in stereo reproduction. It causes the coupling of left and right channels, and thus depriving you from concert effects. Why it happens while listening to recorded sound and not while in live concert hall?
We hear the direction and location of sound sources based on the small differences between the sounds that actually arrive at each of our two ears. Our brain measures and processes those subtle differences in a way that allows us to accurately determine where a sound source is located. Though, we record the left and right channels seperately, and play it back at home using seperate left and right loudspeakers, what is missing is the listening environment. The time differences that occured between left and right ear at concert hall are no more there! This results in Interaural Crosstalk, wherein each ear also gets the sound intended for other ear.
There are many technologies that tries to minimise/eliminate this effect, using innovative post-processing methods. Some technologies such as SDA Surround (developed and patented by Polk Audio) uses both post processing and innovative driver (using array speakers) positioning.
The array loudspeakers/Sound Bars developed using these technologies have effectively addressed the cross talk issues. Yamaha’s YSP-1000, Philips hts6600 and hts8100 and Polk Audio’s SurroundBAR and Soundbar50 are few succesful products that have acheived high customer satisfaction by being able to render sound without cross talk (practically, with very less cross talk).
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