The influence of headphones on the localization of external loudspeaker sources

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.