Individualization of Head-Related Transfer Functions in the Median Plane Using Frontal Projection Headphones

The veracity of binaural audio playback often depends on the type of head related transfer functions (HRTFs) used. Individualized HRTFs are necessary to provide an experience devoid of front-back confusions, up-down reversals, and in-head localization compared to generic HRTFs measured on a dummy head. In this paper, individualization of the median plane HRTFs is carried out using frontal projection headphones. Frontal projection headphones inherently model the idiosyncratic frontal spectral cues due to the frontal positioning of the headphone transducer. To model the HRTFs, the important peaks (P1) and notches (N1, N2) are extracted first from the frontal headphone response and shifted in frequency in accordance with the elevation angle. Detailed subjective experiments indicated that subjects were able to localize the virtual sound sources accurately with modeled HRTFs similar to that using individualized HRTFs.