Estimation of spectral notch frequencies of the individual head-related transfer function from anthropometry of listener's pinna

Listener’s own head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) are necessary for accurate sound image reproduction. The HRTFs of other listeners often cause the front-back confusion and the errors in elevation perception. It is, however, impractical to measure the HRTFs of any listener for any sound source direction because the measurement requires special apparatus and much time. On the other hand, the estimation of the entire spectrum information of listener’s own HRTF still remains as an unsolved difficult issue. One of the authors has shown that the simplified HRTFs, which is recomposed only of the first spectral peak around 4 kHz (P1) and the lowest two spectral notches (N1 and N2) above P1, extracted from the listener’s measured HRTFs in the median plane, provide almost the same localization accuracy as the measured HRTFs. While the frequency of P1 is almost constant independent of the sound source elevation and the listener, those of N1 and N2 are highly dependent on both the elevation and the listener. The present study proposes a method, which estimates the frequencies of N1 and N2 in the median plane for the individual listener from the anthropometry of the listener's pinna, and examines the validity of the method.