Assessment of the change in similarity judgements of auralized engine sounds caused by changes in frequency resolution of transfer functions

Abstract

Auralization facilitates aural examination of contributions from different sound sources, individually and as parts of a context. Auralizations can be created by filtering sounds of the perceptually most salient sources through binaural transfer functions (BTFs) from source positions to a listening position. When psychoacoustic analysis is based on auralizations, the auralizations need to give the same impression as real sounds. The objective of this study was to determine the frequency resolution required for auralizations to be perceptually equivalent to recordings made with an artificial head. Auralizations of the contribution of engine sounds to interior sounds of a truck were examined. In listening tests auralizations based on simplified BTFs were compared to artificial head recordings. The BTFs were simplified by lowering the frequency resolution and by smoothing in the frequency domain. Auralizations made through BTFs with a resolution of 4 Hz or higher or smoothed with maximum 1/96 octave moving average filters were perceived as similar to artificial head recordings.