Abstract
The potential of virtual audio display technology to provide operators with veridical spatial cues may be substantially constrained by factors that are common in many operational settings – i.e., high noise level, limitations in the bandwidth of the audio source and/or display. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of varying the bandwidth of a virtual sound source in the presence of broadband noise in a reverberant environment. Specifically, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) was varied from +50 dB to −10 dB, and the signal was low pass filtered at 1.6 kHz, 4 kHz, 8 kHz, and 15 kHz. Correlational analyses comparing actual and perceived sound source location revealed that both signal bandwidth and signal-to-noise ratio influenced auditory localization acuity, and that even under optimal bandwidth and noise conditions (15 kHz and +50 dB) localization in elevation was extremely poor. These findings have numerous implications for the design of spatial audio displays, especially those meant to be used in noisy environments.
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