A Study on the Influence of the Measurement Accuracy andLength of Long-Duration BRIRs on Binaural Sound Field Reproduction

Fujii Y, Murayama Y, Honda Y, Watanabe Y. A Study on the Influence of the Measurement Accuracy andLength of Long-Duration BRIRs on Binaural Sound Field Reproduction. In: 2025 AES International Conference on Headphone Technology. Audio Engineering Society; 2025.pp. 22:1-7. Available from: https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=22948

@inproceedings{Fujii2025_22948,
  author = {Fujii, Yumi and Murayama, Yoshitaka and Honda, Yasushi and Watanabe, Yuko},
  title = {{A Study on the Influence of the Measurement Accuracy andLength of Long-Duration BRIRs on Binaural Sound Field Reproduction}},
  booktitle = {2025 AES International Conference on Headphone Technology},
  pages = {22:1-7},
  year = {2025},
  month = aug,
  publisher = {Audio Engineering Society},
  url = {https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=22948}
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - A Study on the Influence of the Measurement Accuracy andLength of Long-Duration BRIRs on Binaural Sound Field Reproduction
AU  - Fujii, Yumi
AU  - Murayama, Yoshitaka
AU  - Honda, Yasushi
AU  - Watanabe, Yuko
T2  - 2025 AES International Conference on Headphone Technology
SP  - 1
EP  - 7
M1  - Paper 22
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/08/18
UR  - https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=22948
PB  - Audio Engineering Society
LA  - en
AB  - This study aims to accurately reproduce the sound field (target sound field) perceived from a sound source placed in a reverberant environment, using binaural audio rendering on headphones from both physical and perceptual perspectives. To reproduce the target sound field accurately through headphones, the following challenges must be addressed: (1) Limited temporal accuracy due to insufficient BRIR length. (2) The need for a sufficiently high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) to measure long BRIRs. Previous studies have shown that a BRIR length exceeding 25 ms enhances the sense of externalization. In this study, we employed BRIRs with even longer response lengths than those used in conventional approaches to improve the accuracy of sound field reproduction. We then evaluated the reproduction accuracy using both physical and perceptual criteria under measurement conditions that ensured a sufficiently high SNR. The reproduction accuracy was assessed from the following two perspectives: Physical fidelity: How accurately acoustic phenomena observed at the listeners earssuch as amplitude, temporal, and frequency characteristics were reproduced when comparing the actual target sound field and its reproduction via headphones. Perceptual fidelity: Whether the listener could reach a state in which they could not distinguish, by hearing alone, between the actual target sound field and the headphone reproduction. In a preliminary experiment, we used a high-SNR measurement system, an open-back headphone, and a single loudspeaker as the sound source. A microphone was placed at the entrance of the ear canal of a dummy head to measure BRIRs. For physical fidelity, it was confirmed that using BRIRs with response lengths of 800 ms or more minimized the difference in binaural signals between the target sound field and the headphone reproduction. For perceptual fidelity, enhanced spatial realismincluding localization and sound field spaciousness was observed. These results suggest that, to achieve high-fidelity sound field reproduction through headphones, it is crucial to ensure both sufficiently long BRIRs and high-SNR measurement conditions.
ER  -