Article
Evaluating the Influence of different Generic Head Related Transfer-Functions on Plausibility of Binaural Rendering (en)
* Presenting author
Abstract:
Plausibility refers to the listener's belief in the realism of a virtual sound source in the absence of an explicit reference and is therefore a well-suited paradigm for evaluating spatial audio for augmented and virtual reality. Since binaural audio is mostly based on Head Related Transfer Functions (HRTFs), an ongoing research project investigates the influence of employed HRTFs on the plausibility of virtual acoustic environments. This study presents a comparison of several generic HRTFs. In a series of listening experiments conducted in an anechoic chamber, participants were asked to indicate whether they believed that a sound was played back by one of four surrounding real loudspeakers or virtually by dynamic binaural synthesis through headphones. In a previous study, we already examined HRTFs measured with a KU100. Since the participants wore AKG K1000 headphones during the experiment, the HRTFs were also measured with a dummy head wearing AKG K1000. In this work, we conducted follow-up experiments evaluating HRTFs measured with a Neumann KU100 without headphones, HRTFs measured with a KEMAR, and an HRTF set of a spherical head model.