A pair of spectral notches which plays a role as a spectral cue in the vertical localization, and it's application to estimation of sound source elevation from binaural signals

Abstract

The author [Applied Acoustics, 68, 835‐850 (2007)] proposed a parametric HRTF model for vertical sound localization. The parametric HRTF is recomposed only of the spectral peaks and notches extracted from the measured HRTF. The results of the median plane localization tests, which were carried out using the parametric HRTFs with various combinations of spectral peaks and notches, show that the pair of first and second notches (N1 and N2) above 5 kHz can be regarded as spectral cues. In this research, estimation of the elevation of sound source in the upper median plane by extracting N1 and N2 frequencies from binaural input signal was carried out. The kinds of sound sources were female voice, male voice, music, white noise, and pink noise. The results show that the estimation is accurate for almost of all the elevation and of all the kind of sound sources.