Azimuth perception of virtual sources in automotive environment : speech and musical stimulus

Abstract

The spatial reproduction of musical media in car environment presents a number of challenges, due to the fact that the loudspeakers are not symmetrical in relation to the listeners and to the unique acoustic characteristics. In particular, the positioning of virtual sources is difficult to apprehend, unlike in conventional stereophonic configurations. In an initial study, it was shown that an azimuth perception model, the extended energy vector, produced results that were consistent with experimental data. As the first experiment was carried out using only a short burst of pink noise, it seemed interesting to compare this model with other data from more natural signals. New experiments were therefore carried out using audio samples such as speech and instruments. The subjects, seated in the driving seat, pointed their noses in the perceived direction of the signal, their head movements being recorded with a headtracker. The model will be compared with these new experimental data.