A low latency implementation of a non-uniform partitioned convolution algorithm for room acoustic simulation

Finite impulse response convolution is one of the most widely used operations in digital signal processing field for filtering operations. Low computationally demanding techniques are essential for calculating convolutions with low input/output latency in real scenarios, considering that the real-time requirements are strictly related to the impulse response length. In this context, a complete overview of the state of the art relative to the algorithms for fast computation of convolution is described here. Then, a novel perceptual approach employed to reduce the computational cost of fast convolution algorithms is here presented. It is based on the pre-processing of a selected impulse response and it allows to further reduce the number of complex multiplications considering the energy decay relief and the absolute threshold of hearing, as psychoacoustic constraints. Several results are reported in terms of computational cost and perceived audio quality in order to prove the effectiveness of the proposed approach also introducing comparisons with the existing techniques of the state of the art.