Article
A Representative Database of Head-Related Transfer Functions of Europeans (en)
* Presenting author
Abstract:
Head-Related Transfer Functions (HRTFs) describe the interaction of the sound field with the listener's head, torso, and pinna and are required for personalized binaural headphone reproduction. However, existing HRTF and head databases are not representative of the general population, which may introduce an unfair bias in research on HRTF individualization, especially when considering learning-based approaches. To address this, we acquired high-resolution 3D head scans and pinna images from multiple angles of 110 subjects by equally sampling 11 age groups, ranging from 18 to 73 years and both sexes, male and female. The factors age and sex were selected after a review of existing databases containing anthropometric head and pinna measures. We will present a validation of the representativeness of the database by comparing anthropometric measures from the literature with those found in the newly acquired database. In addition, we used the acquired 3D head meshes to numerically simulate HRTFs and will present first results on the influence of demographic and anthropometric factors on HRTFs.