Human Auditory Localization Performance in Azimuth

Human auditory localization performance in the free‐field, over headphones via a simulator and over headphones via a real‐time, head coupled, digital auditory localization cue synthesizer will be described in the presentation. In the headphone conditions, the head position is monitored to update the sound source position relative to the listener's orientation. The synthesizer presents sounds over headphones that are perceived to be outside of the listener's head in the horizontal plane. The performance experiments were designed using a within subject, repeated measure study. The stimuli used were wideband pink noise, male speech bandlimited to 3.5 kHz, female speech bandlimited to 6 kHz and octave band noise from 125 Hz to 8 kHz. The mean magnitude error and mean response time were measured at 72 random points for each stimulus. Five male and five female subjects participated. A 4.8‐deg mean magnitude error and a 4.4‐s mean response time were collected with the synthesizer.