Virtualising SPHERE: active listening in 3D sound localisation

La Magna N, Lever L, Desoche C, Meyer-Kahlen N, Gaveau V, Picinali L. Virtualising SPHERE: active listening in 3D sound localisation. In: AVARIG 2026: Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality and Immersive Games. Audio Engineering Society; 2026. Paper 471. Available from: https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23364

@inproceedings{LaMagna2026_23364,
  author = {La Magna, Nicola and Lever, Lisa and Desoche, Clément and Meyer-Kahlen, Nils and Gaveau, Valerie and Picinali, Lorenzo},
  title = {{Virtualising SPHERE: active listening in 3D sound localisation}},
  booktitle = {AVARIG 2026: Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality and Immersive Games},
  note = {Paper 471},
  year = {2026},
  month = jun,
  publisher = {Audio Engineering Society},
  url = {https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23364}
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - Virtualising SPHERE: active listening in 3D sound localisation
AU  - La Magna, Nicola
AU  - Lever, Lisa
AU  - Desoche, Clément
AU  - Meyer-Kahlen, Nils
AU  - Gaveau, Valerie
AU  - Picinali, Lorenzo
T2  - AVARIG 2026: Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality and Immersive Games
M1  - Paper 471
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/06/30
UR  - https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23364
PB  - Audio Engineering Society
LA  - en
AB  - Spatial hearing relies on auditory, visual, and motor information, and under natural conditions is enhanced through active listening, whereby head and body movements provide dynamic cues that improve localisation accuracy. Virtual Reality technologies have enabled the reproduction of these cues via binaural rendering based on Head-Related Transfer Functions (HRTFs), as well as room acoustic information, offering controlled yet ecologically valid environments for spatial hearing assessment. Among the paradigms developed within this framework is SPHERE, originally designed to investigate three-dimensional sound localisation in both normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners. In its original implementation, sounds are reproduced from a loudspeaker moved by an operator, tracking head, eye, and hand movements during static and active listening. However, the reliance on a human operator limits reproducibility and scalability. The work presented in this paper aims to develop and evaluate a fully virtualised implementation of the SPHERE paradigm using immersive binaural rendering and real-time tracking. The system replicates the original spatial configuration, with targets at 30 and 150 across three distances (35, 55, and 75 cm), rendered over headphones using both KEMAR and individual HRTFs. Sounds are generated using the BeRTa Renderer framework, combining anechoic rendering from the SONICOM dataset with binaural room impulse responses measured in the experimental environment. Listening conditions alternate between static and active blocks to assess the contribution of self-motion cues. Performance in the virtual environment was compared with the original loudspeaker-based setup to evaluate ecological validity and the impact of HRTFs individualisation. Preliminary results using KEMAR HRTFs suggest that binaural reproduction captures similar qualitative effects of active listening as the ones observed in the original test, albeit with reduced overall accuracy. These findings remain provisional, and further analyses with larger samples, individual HRTFs, and complementary measures will be required to assess the validity of the virtual implementation.
ER  -