Apparatus and method for audio rendering employing a geometric distance definition

A decoder device comprising:

• a USAC decoder for decoding a bitstream to acquire one or more audio input channels, to acquire one or more input audio objects, to acquire compressed object metadata and to acquire one or more SAOC transport channels,
• an SAOC decoder for decoding the one or more SAOC transport channels to acquire a group of one or more rendered audio objects,
• an object metadata decoder, for decoding the compressed object metadata to acquire uncompressed metadata,
• a format converter for converting the one or more audio input channels to acquire one or more converted channels, and
• a mixer for mixing the one or more rendered audio objects of the group of one or more rendered audio objects, the one or more input audio objects and the one or more converted channels to acquire one or more decoded audio channels,
• wherein the object metadata decoder and the mixer together form an apparatus according to one of the preceding claims,
• wherein the object metadata decoder comprises the distance calculator of the apparatus according to one of the preceding claims, wherein the distance calculator is configured, for each input audio object of the one or more input audio objects, to calculate distances of the position associated with said input audio object to speakers or for reading the distances of the position associated with said input audio object to the speakers, and to take a solution with a smallest distance, and
• wherein the mixer is configured to output each input audio object of the one or more input audio objects within one of the one or more decoded audio channels to the speaker corresponding to the solution determined by the distance calculator of the apparatus according to one of the preceding claims for said input audio object.

A non-transitory digital storage medium having a computer program stored thereon to perform the method for playing back an audio object associated with a position, comprising:

• determining a solution with a smallest distance of distances of the position to speakers, and
• playing back the audio object using the speaker corresponding to the solution,
• when said computer program is run by a computer,
• wherein the method comprises calculating the distances depending on a function which depends on one or more angular differences between the position of the audio object and a speaker position.