The ear and brain perceive the vertical position of sounds by matching the timbre detected at the eardrum of a listener to timbre patterns built up by that individual over a long period of time. But the eardrum timbre depends dramatically on ear canal resonances between 1000 Hz and 6000 Hz that boost the pressure at the eardrum as much as 20 dB. These resonances are highly individual and are either eliminated or altered by headphones. In-head localization is the result. We have developed an app that uses an equal-loudness procedure to measure and restore the natural timbre. Accurate timbre and frontal localization are then perceived without head-tracking, and binaural recordings can be stunningly realistic.

Author: Griesinger, David
Affiliation: David Griesinger Acoustics, Cambridge, MA, USA
AES Convention: 141 (September 2016) Paper Number: 9620
Publication Date: September 20, 2016
Subject: Spatial Audio

Download Now (770 KB)

This paper is Open Access which means you can download it for free.

No AES members have commented on this paper yet.

Subscribe to this discussion

To be notified of new comments on this paper you can subscribe to this RSS feed. Forum users should login to see additional options.

Start a discussion!

If you would like to start a discussion about this paper and are an AES member then you can login here:
Username:
Password:

If you are not yet an AES member and have something important to say about this paper then we urge you to join the AES today and make your voice heard. You can join online today by clicking here.