Efficient Binaural Rendering of Moving Sound Sources Using HRTF Interpolation.

Queiroz, Marcelo; de Sousa, GustavoHenrique Montesião

This paper presents efficient techniques for the simulation of continuously moving sound sources, to be presented over headphones, based on the interpolation of Head-Related Transfer Functions (HRTFs). Two novel approaches are presented, one based on interpolating impulse responses in time-domain, and another based on interpolating poles and zeros of low-order Infinite Impulse Response (IIR) approximations of measured HRTF filters. These techniques are apt both for real-time implementation and for multi-user applications where several independent binaural renderings are required. We discuss some of the difficulties of assessing the quality of the results from both objective and subjective points-of-view, and provide objective measurements of the errors caused by the interpolation schemes, as well as of the errors introduced by the use of low-order IIR approximations. A subjective evaluation of these techniques using non-individualized HRTFs suggests that they are able to preserve spatial impression of directions in binaural rendering of static and moving sound sources.

BINAURAL hearing aids; HEADPHONES; MEASUREMENT errors; INTERPOLATION; ACOUSTIC localization; TRANSFER functions

Journal of New Music Research, 2011, Vol 40, Issue 3, p239

0929-8215

Academic Journal

10.1080/09298215.2011.594894