The influence of headphones on the localization of external loudspeaker sources Satongar, D, Pike, C, Lam, YW and Tew, AI 10.17743/jaes.2015.0072 Title The influence of headphones on the localization of external loudspeaker sources Authors Satongar, D, Pike, C, Lam, YW and Tew, AI Type Article URL This version is available at: http://usir.salford.ac.uk/37941/ Published Date 2015 USIR is a digital collection of the research output of the University of Salford. Where copyright permits, full text material held in the repository is made freely available online and can be read, downloaded and copied for non-commercial private study or research purposes. Please check the manuscript for any further copyright restrictions. For more information, including our policy and submission procedure, please contact the Repository Team at: [email protected]. PAPERS Journal of the Audio Engineering Society Vol. 63, No. 10, October 2015 ( C 2015) ⃝ DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17743/jaes.2015.0072 The Influence of Headphones on the Localization of External Loudspeaker Sources DARIUS SATONGAR,1 AES Student Member ,CHRISPIKE,2, 3 AES Member ,YIUW.LAM1,AND ANTHONY I. TEW,3 AES Associate Member 1 University of Salford, UK 2 BBC Research and Development, UK 3 University of York, UK When validating systems that use headphones to synthesize virtual sound sources, a direct comparison between virtual and real sources is sometimes needed. This paper considers the passive influence of headphones on the sound transmission and perception of external loud- speaker sources, for which physical measurements and behavioral data have been obtained. Physical measurements of the effect of a number of headphone models are given and ana- lyzed using an auditory filter bank and binaural cue extraction. These highlighted that all of the headphones had an effect on localization cues and repositioning had a measurable effect. Alocalizationtestwasundertakenusingoneofthebestperformingheadphonesfromthe measurements. It was found that the presence of the headphones caused a small increase in localization error and that the process of judging source location was different, highlighting a possible increase in the complexity of the localization task. 0INTRODUCTION ization studies [16, 17]. The passive use of headphones may have a significant effect on the perception of the ex- The use of binaural rendering is popular in a number of ternal loudspeaker and therefore cause an unknown and audio applications—from hearing research [1–3] to enter- possibly directionally dependent bias. Hartmann and Wit- tainment [4, 5]. In each application, the specific require- tenberg [10] noted that wearing headphones appeared to ments for the performance of a binaural system will be affect the listeners’ ability to distinguish between front slightly different although generally, the aim is to induce the and back, although they also state that they were not perception of intended auditory events as accurately as pos- aware of its effect on experiments in the azimuthal plane. sible. Designing an assessment methodology that validates To highlight the importance of the problem, Erbes et al. abinauralsystemwithinitsintendedapplicationisoften [18] presented work on the development of an advanced adifficulttask.Acommonmetricforabinauralsystemis headphone system specifically for the field of binaural the ability to produce a virtual sound source that is indistin- reproduction. guishable from a real sound source. Indirect comparisons This study investigates whether headphones mounted on have been investigated, for example, by Minnaar et al. [6] alistenerwillhaveasignificanteffectontheperception and Møller et al. [7, 8] in which non-dynamic binaural sim- of external sound sources in the horizontal plane. The per- ulation and real loudspeaker localization tasks were con- ceptual effect of the distortion in sound transmission from sidered in separated experiments. However, for direct com- external loudspeakers, passively caused by headphones, is parisons where real and virtual loudspeakers are presented studied in two ways: (1) consideration of the physical dif- simultaneously, the validation of headphone-based binaural ferences in HRTFs measured with and without headphones systems against a real loudspeaker reference can be prob- and the implications on interaural cues, and (2) a localiza- lematic. The listener must wear the headphones throughout tion test quantifying the passive effect of STAX SR-202 the experiment, which will affect the sound transmission headphones on the localization of external loudspeakers. from the external loudspeakers. A number of discrimina- Blauert [19] states that the localization of a sound event in- tion studies have involved direct comparison of real sources corporates both direction and distance attributes. The term with headphone-delivered virtual sources [9–13] as well as “localization” used in this paper refers only to the direction- some recent localization tests [14, 15] and loudness equal- of-arrival aspect. J. Audio Eng. Soc., Vol. 63, No. 10, 2015 October 799 SATONGAR ET AL. PAPERS There are a number of possible approaches to compen- Table 1. Description of the headphones under test for physical sate for the effect of headphones on the perception of ex- measurements ternal sound sources. Moore, Tew, and Nicol [20] investi- gated the compensation of headphone transmission effects Headphone Model Ear Coupling Transducer Open/Closed using the headphones directly, where compensation filters Sony MDR-V500 Supra-aural Dynamic Closed were derived from HRTF measurements with and without Sennheiser HD650 Circum-aural Dynamic Open headphones coupled. Their results highlighted attenuation AKG K601 Circum-aural Dynamic Open at frequencies above 1 kHz. The authors highlighted that Sennheiser HD800 Circum-aural Dynamic Open STAX SR-202 Circum-aural Electrostatic Open at frequencies above 1 kHz, headphones produced signals that were of the same order of magnitude as the loudspeaker source. Another possibility is to fit earphones with outward facing microphones to create a pseudoacoustic approxima- 1PHYSICALMEASUREMENTS tion of the external sounds as demonstrated by Harm¨ aetal.¨ To explore the perceptual significance of headphones on [21]. By filtering the signal received by the microphones the distortion of transmission from external speakers to the to compensate for the earphone response and minimizing ear, measurements were made on a number of available leakage through the headset design and listening level, the headphone sets. The measurements were taken to give an system is a realistic possibility. Virtual sources are then indication of the filtering effect the headphones had on the synthesized using transfer functions also measured at the transmission from external sound sources. Similar percep- microphones on the binaural headset. Here both the “real” tually motivated transfer function analysis has also been un- and “virtual” signals are approximations of the real loud- dertaken for head-related impulse response measurements speaker sound at the ear canal entrance, since they are mea- [25]. A range of headphones was chosen that are commonly sured at a point outside the ear canal where some source used in binaural experiments as well as attempting to show direction dependence still exists [22]. The pseudoacoustic arangeofdifferentmodels.TheSonyMDR-V500model loudspeaker sources also contain other errors, such as leak- was chosen as the only closed-back headphone to give a age of the external signal through the earphones, which “worse-case scenario.” Table 1 lists the headphone sets varies individually due to earphone fitting, a delay intro- measured. The terminology “open/closed” in Table 1 refers duced by filtering in comparison to the leaked signal, and to the manufacturers design specification usually mean- alteration of the pressure division at the entrance to the ear ing that sounds from the outside can be heard when wear- canal. ing the headphones as opposed to any measured objective Making HRTF measurements with headphones worn criteria [22]. would mean the transmission from both real and simulated loudspeakers is affected by the passive filtering effect of the headphones but would allow for direct comparison be- 1.1 Method tween the two systems. This approach was implemented by Measurements were made in the semi-anechoic cham- Volk¨ [16, 23] and later studies [15, 13] for both a dummy ber in the University of Salford Acoustic Research Centre. head and real listeners. If the headphones do not have a This has a hard floor surface and acoustically absorbent perceptually significant effect on transmission from exter- walls and ceiling. The chamber has a working volume of nal sound sources to the ear then no additional processing 4.2 3.3 3.0 m and background noise level of 3.8 dBA. is required to compensate for the presence of the head- Transfer× function× measurements were made using the expo- phones. This is dependent upon the physical headphone nential swept-sinusoid method. The B&K Head and Torso construction. Previous studies have used this approach. Simulator (HATS) Type 4100 was fitted with calibrated Zahorik et al. [9] state that the supra-aural headphones measurement microphones positioned at the entrance to the used in their study were chosen for “minimal acoustic ear canal position therefore simulating measurement at the obstruction,” while Lindau and Weinzeirl [12] state that entrance to a blocked ear canal. The HATS was mounted their chosen circum-aural electrostatic