A Multimodal Evaluation Framework for Spatial Audio Playback Systems: From Localization to Listener Preference

Spatial audio playback defines immersive listening. However, objective evaluation methods for perceptual dimensions like sound field and sound image remain underdeveloped, hindered by the lack of fine-grained spatial audio datasets and the neglect of echoes and reverberation in diverse playback conditions. To address these challenges, we propose MESA, a multi-modal evaluation framework for spatial audio systems, and introduce PSA-MOS, a high-quality multi-scene spatial audio dataset. Specifically: 1) PSA-MOS provides 50 hours of high-quality spatial audio recordings spanning 6 playback scenarios and 7 device types, with detailed localization annotations and fine-grained MOS ratings across four perceptual dimensions. 2) We develop SAE-Encoder, a spatial audio encoder that captures both acoustic-spatial cues and fine-grained perceptual patterns. 3) MESA integrates visual scene context to enhance evaluation robustness through echo and reverberation modeling. Experimental results demonstrate that SAE-Encoder achieves superior performance in SELD tasks. With a two-stage training strategy, MESA exhibits strong correlation with human perceptual assessments, effectively guiding spatial audio quality optimization. The demos are available at https://david-pigeon.github.io/mesaDemo.