A study of the effect of visual images on three-dimensional sound localization

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to develop a three-dimensional acoustic display, in which an interaction between a visual and a sound image is taken into account. To find out the characteristics of the interaction, it is useful to examine the effect of visual images on three-dimensional sound localization. In general, it is known that the visual image affects the location of sound images. It is particularly evident when both of the locations are close to each other. For instance, when a sound image located at a certain angle with respect to the listener is presented, the perceived position of the sound image would be shifted toward the image due to the interactions. This phenomena may lead to a simplification of the signal processing for sound localization, since now information from both a visual and a sound image can be used to localize the sound image at a certain position. In this paper, results of some basic experiments will be presented, and the influence of visual images on sound localization will be considered. The visual image was created by computer graphics and the sound images were reproduced using head-related transfer functions.