Perceptual Evaluation of Numerically Simulated Head-Related Transfer Functions

Head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) produced by numerical simulations were compared to measured HRTFs through two listening tests. The purpose was to determine whether the numerically simulated HRTFs, which do not contain any of the artifacts associated with acoustic measurements, capture the detail necessary for reproducing convincing 3D sound. The results suggest that when virtual sound sources are presented to listeners binaurally over headphones, the measured and modelled HRTF sets perform equally well in terms of perception of direction. Regarding preference of binauralisation methods, the simulated HRTFs performed slightly better.