Spatial auditory masking between real sound signals and virtual sound images

Nishiguchi M, Ishihara S, Watanabe K, Abe K, Takane S. Spatial auditory masking between real sound signals and virtual sound images. In: AES Convention 151. Audio Engineering Society; 2021. Paper 10524. Available from: https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=21488

@inproceedings{Nishiguchi2021_21488,
  author = {Nishiguchi, Masayuki and Ishihara, Soma and Watanabe, Kanji and Abe, Koji and Takane, Shouichi},
  title = {{Spatial auditory masking between real sound signals and virtual sound images}},
  booktitle = {AES Convention 151},
  note = {Paper 10524},
  year = {2021},
  month = oct,
  publisher = {Audio Engineering Society},
  url = {https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=21488}
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - Spatial auditory masking between real sound signals and virtual sound images
AU  - Nishiguchi, Masayuki
AU  - Ishihara, Soma
AU  - Watanabe, Kanji
AU  - Abe, Koji
AU  - Takane, Shouichi
T2  - AES Convention 151
M1  - Paper 10524
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/10/06
UR  - https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=21488
PB  - Audio Engineering Society
LA  - en
AB  - In an augmented reality environment, real and virtual world audio signals are simultaneously presented to a listener. Virtual sound content and a real sound source should not interfere with each other. Thus, to make this possible, we have examined spatial auditory masking between maskers and maskees, where maskers are real sound signals emitted from loudspeakers, and maskees are virtual sound images generated using head-related transfer functions (HRTFs), emitted from headphones. The experiment was conducted using open-ear headphones, which allows us to hear the environment while listening to the audio content. The results are similar to those of a previous experiment, in which the masker and maskee were both real signals emitted from loudspeakers. Masking threshold levels as a function of maskee locations have a symmetric property to the frontal plane of a subject with a given masker location. However, the masking threshold level is lower than in the previous experiment, perhaps due to HRTFs’ limited ability to localize sound images. The results indicate that, like real sound signals, spatial auditory masking of human hearing occurs with virtually localized sound images.
ER  -