Benchmarking Spatial Audio Reproduction Systems in Smart Glasses and XR Headsets: Illustrative Results and Interpretation

Wu Y, Treanor G, Roginska A. Benchmarking Spatial Audio Reproduction Systems in Smart Glasses and XR Headsets: Illustrative Results and Interpretation. In: AVARIG 2026: Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality and Immersive Games. Audio Engineering Society; 2026. Paper 10348. Available from: https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23310

@inproceedings{Wu2026_23310,
  author = {Wu, Yi and Treanor, Garrett and Roginska, Agnieszka},
  title = {{Benchmarking Spatial Audio Reproduction Systems in Smart Glasses and XR Headsets: Illustrative Results and Interpretation}},
  booktitle = {AVARIG 2026: Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality and Immersive Games},
  note = {Paper 10348},
  year = {2026},
  month = jun,
  publisher = {Audio Engineering Society},
  url = {https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23310}
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - Benchmarking Spatial Audio Reproduction Systems in Smart Glasses and XR Headsets: Illustrative Results and Interpretation
AU  - Wu, Yi
AU  - Treanor, Garrett
AU  - Roginska, Agnieszka
T2  - AVARIG 2026: Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality and Immersive Games
M1  - Paper 10348
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/06/30
UR  - https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23310
PB  - Audio Engineering Society
LA  - en
AB  - This paper presents an illustrative cross-device evaluation of spatial audio reproduction in smart glasses and XR headsets using binaural in-ear recordings and external sound-level measurements on four anonymized commercial devices. The evaluation is organized around baseline playback behavior, cue fidelity, sound leakage, and robustness to wearing variability, with metrics derived from broadband-noise and swept-sine measurements. The results reveal distinct device behaviors, including differences in channel balance, interchannel signal behavior, preservation of HRTF-encoded binaural cues, perturbation of real-world acoustic cues, external sound radiation, and sensitivity to reseating. Rather than establishing a product ranking, this study demonstrates how the benchmark supports structured cross-device interpretation of wearable XR spatial audio systems.
ER  -