Abstract: A method and an apparatus for detecting loudspeaker connection errors and positioning errors during calibration of a multichannel audio system to which a plurality of loudspeakers is connected. Within a calibration process of a multichannel audio system, the loudspeaker whose angle is to be measured is identified by emitting a test tone (451) and verifying (460) the conformance between angles measured and a range of acceptable angles for each loudspeaker. A positioning error is detected when the measured angle is not included in the range of acceptable angles but in the range of acceptable angles of the closest speaker. A connection error is detected when the measured angle is very different from the range of acceptable angles. In case of errors, a recommendation is expressed (470) to the user in order to make the appropriate corrections. A calibration device (100) and an audio processing device (120) implementing the method are disclosed.

Abstract: A recording is usually a mixture of signals from several sound sources. The directions of the dominant sources in the recording may be known or determined using a source localization algorithm. To isolate or focus on a target source, multiple beamformers may be used. In one embodiment, each beamformer points to a direction of a dominant source and the outputs from the beamformers are processed to focus on the target source. Depending on whether the beamformer pointing to the target source has an output that is larger than the outputs of other beamformers, a reference signal or a scaled output of the beamformer pointing to the target source can be used to determine the signal corresponding to the target source. The scaling factor may depend on a ratio of the output of the beamformer pointing to the target source and the maximum value of the outputs of the other beamformers.