The influence of headphones on the localization of external loudspeaker sources

Satongar, D; Pike, C; Lam, YW; Tew, AI

Abstract

When validating systems that use headphones to synthesize virtual sound sources, a direct
comparison between virtual and real sources is sometimes needed. This paper considers the
passive influence of headphones on the sound transmission and perception of external loudspeaker
sources, for which physical measurements and behavioral data have been obtained.
Physical measurements of the effect of a number of headphone models are given and analyzed
using an auditory filter bank and binaural cue extraction. These highlighted that all of
the headphones had an effect on localization cues and repositioning had a measurable effect.
A localization test was undertaken using one of the best performing headphones from the
measurements. It was found that the presence of the headphones caused a small increase in
localization error and that the process of judging source location was different, highlighting a
possible increase in the complexity of the localization task.

Citation

Satongar, D., Pike, C., Lam, Y., & Tew, A. (2015). The influence of headphones on the localization of external loudspeaker sources. Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, 63(10), 799-810. https://doi.org/10.17743/jaes.2015.0072

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 17, 2015
• Publication Date: Nov 5, 2015
• Deposit Date: Feb 8, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 13, 2016
• Journal: Journal of the Audio Engineering Society
• Print ISSN: 1549-4950
• Publisher: Audio Engineering Society
• Volume: 63
• Issue: 10
• Pages: 799-810
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.17743/jaes.2015.0072
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.17743/jaes.2015.0072
• Related Public URLs: http://www.aes.org/journal/
• Additional Information: Grant Number: EP/1501649/1