A low cost, non-individualized surround sound system based upon head related transfer functions: An ergonomics study and prototype development

Effects of Spectral Manipulation on Nonindividualized Head-Related Transfer Functions (HRTFs)

“…Otherwise, they were told they should position the cursor outside the circle such that the relative angle between the cursor position and the center of the circle best indicated the perceived angle of the source. The interface was adapted from Braasch (2001) and So et al (2006) and was developed with the use of the Matlab package.…”

“…To save space, directional sounds coming from the five speakers may be simulated with the use of a binaural signal that employs head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) and is played through a pair of headphones. This technology is referred to as virtual surround sound (Begault, 1994;So, Leung, Braasch, & Leung, 2006). Since individually measured HRTFs can cost in excess of US$2,000 to obtain, free non-individual HRTFs have been commonly used in virtual surround-sound systems (So et al, 2006).…”

“…This technology is referred to as virtual surround sound (Begault, 1994;So, Leung, Braasch, & Leung, 2006). Since individually measured HRTFs can cost in excess of US$2,000 to obtain, free non-individual HRTFs have been commonly used in virtual surround-sound systems (So et al, 2006).…”

“…In this study, we aimed to reduce the front-back confusion in simulated directional sounds by enhancing the spectral cues in nonindividualized HRTFs. The problem of front-back confusion has hampered the widespread use of nonindividualized HRTFs in applications such as virtual reality (VR; Begault, 1994) and surround-sound systems (So et al, 2006). Front-back confusion in VR systems has been so routinely accepted that experimenters conducting VR studies with 3-D audio cues simply informed participants of whether sounds were coming from the front or the back (Nguyen et al, 2009).…”

Efficiency evaluation and orthogonal basis determination in functional HRTF modeling

“…Many applications, such as virtual sound synthesis, binaural noise reduction, sound localization, sound separation, require individualized Head-Related Transfer Functions (HRTFs), which can be measured in an anechoic room [1]. However, such a database can only provides HRTFs for a finite number of source positions.…”