Investigation of Effect of VR/AR Headgear on Head Related Transfer Functions for Natural Listening

Gupta R, Ranjan R, He J, Gan Woon-Seng. Investigation of Effect of VR/AR Headgear on Head Related Transfer Functions for Natural Listening. In: AES Conference: 2018 AES International Conference on Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality. Audio Engineering Society; 2018. Paper P3-9. Available from: https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=19697

@inproceedings{Gupta2018_19697,
  author = {Gupta, Rishabh and Ranjan, Rishabh and He, Jianjun and {Gan Woon-Seng}},
  title = {{Investigation of Effect of VR/AR Headgear on Head Related Transfer Functions for Natural Listening}},
  booktitle = {AES Conference: 2018 AES International Conference on Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality},
  note = {Paper P3-9},
  year = {2018},
  month = aug,
  publisher = {Audio Engineering Society},
  url = {https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=19697}
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - Investigation of Effect of VR/AR Headgear on Head Related Transfer Functions for Natural Listening
AU  - Gupta, Rishabh
AU  - Ranjan, Rishabh
AU  - He, Jianjun
AU  - Gan Woon-Seng
T2  - AES Conference: 2018 AES International Conference on Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality
M1  - Paper P3-9
PY  - 2018
DA  - 2018/08/06
UR  - https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=19697
PB  - Audio Engineering Society
LA  - en
AB  - With the advent of Virtual/Augmented/Mixed Reality (VR/AR/MR) applications and accompanied head-mounted displays (HMDs), these devices are becoming increasingly common in daily life use producing immersive virtual and augmented audio-visual content. However, the presence of these HMDs alters the acoustic propagation of the sound waves from the sound sources to the human ears, resulting in changes in head-related transfer functions (HRTFs). In this paper we conducted measurements of HRTFs with and without these HMDs and investigated the effect of these headgears on HRTFs at different source directions using objective metrics. Noticeable changes in HRTF magnitude spectrum were observed in 1–16 kHz frequency range. Spectral difference (SD) was higher in the contralateral ear than ipsilateral ear. HMDs with large display visor incurred significantly larger SD and ILD errors at –60° and –120° above 1 kHz, whereas glass visor resulted in reflections leading to multiple peaks in mid frequency range of 3–7 kHz at –120°. Subjective listening tests for spatial and timbre quality validated the objective results.
ER  -