Abstract
It is widely acknowledged that individualized head-related transfer function (HRTF) measurements are needed to adequately capture all of the 3D spatial hearing cues. However, many perceptual studies have shown that localization accuracy in the lateral dimension is only minimally decreased by the use of non-individualized head-related transfer functions. This evidence supports the idea that the individualized components of an HRTF could be isolated from those that are more general in nature. In the present study we decomposed the HRTF at each location into average, lateral and intraconic spectral components, along with an ITD in an effort to isolate the sound localization cues that are responsible for the inter-individual differences in localization performance. HRTFs for a given listener were then reconstructed systematically with components that were both individualized and non-individualized in nature, and the effect of each modification was analyzed via a virtual localization test where brief 250 ms noise bursts were rendered with the modified HRTFs. Results indicate that the cues important for individualization of HRTFs are contained almost exclusively in the intraconic portion of the HRTF spectra and localization is only minimally affected by introducing non-individualized cues into the other HRTF components. These results provide new insights into what specific inter-individual differences in head-related acoustical features are most relevant to sound localization, and provide a framework for how future human-machine interfaces might be more effectively generalized and/or individualized.
Highlights
It has long been the desire of auditory scientists to discover and map how specific physical features of the sound arriving at the two ears translate to distinct locations in perceptual space
While virtual auditory displays (VADs) based on this technology have been employed in many applications including entertainment, gaming, virtual reality (Travis, 1996) and navigational aids for pilots (Simpson et al, 2007), high fidelity performance, or accurate localization in the vertical and front-back dimensions, requires that the head-related transfer function (HRTF) be measured on the specific user utilizing the display, limiting their widespread implementation
We examine the importance of having individualized HRTF measurements on a component-by-component basis by constructing HRTFs that have some individualized components and some components from an HRTF measured on a KEMAR acoustic mannequin
Summary
It has long been the desire of auditory scientists to discover and map how specific physical features of the sound arriving at the two ears translate to distinct locations in perceptual space. All of the physical cues available to a listener for making spatial judgments are captured in a listener’s head-related transfer function, which describes the transformation a sound undergoes as it travels from a specific location in space, interacts with the listener’s head, shoulders, and outer ears and arrives at a listener’s eardrums (Mehrgardt and Mellert, 1977). These transfer functions can be calculated for a specific sound source direction by outfitting a listener with binaural microphones and recording the arrival of a known signal presented from the desired location (Mehrgardt and Mellert, 1977; Wightman and Kistler, 1989a). Several authors have shown that when VADs use HRTFs measured on a different individual or acoustic mannequin, localization performance is severely degraded, resulting in especially poor elevation localization and frequent confusions about the front-back hemisphere of the target sound (Wenzel et al, 1993; Middlebrooks, 1999a; Brungart and Romigh, 2009)
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