The relation between the information delivered by head-related transfer function and human spatial hearing

Vladimir Tourbabin, Boaz Rafaely

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articlepeer-review

Abstract

The human auditory system is capable of performing various tasks related to spatial hearing including sound localization and source segregation. The performance of these tasks depends on many factors, including the complexity of the sound field; the way in which the information from the sound field is transferred to the ears; and the ability of the binaural hearing system to extract the required information. This study focuses on the role of the transfer system represented by the HRTFs that relate the sound field to the signals at the ears. Previously, a measure for the information delivered by the HRTFs was proposed and the role of HRTFs in human sound localization in the horizontal and median planes was investigated. In the current study the role of HRTFs in human sound localization is further investigated by analyzing localization in the entire three-dimensional space. Then, the proposed measure is used to investigate the role of HRTFs in source segregation as part of a spatial-release from masking task. The results generally show that the information delivered by the HRTFs can account to some extent for the improvement in the performance as a function of the azimuthal separation between the desired source and the masker.

Original languageEnglish
Article number050171
JournalProceedings of Meetings on Acoustics
Volume19
DOIs
StatePublished - 19 Jun 2013
Event21st International Congress on Acoustics, ICA 2013 - 165th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America - Montreal, QC, Canada
Duration: 2 Jun 20137 Jun 2013

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Acoustics and Ultrasonics

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