An Initial Validation of Individualized Crosstalk Cancellation Filters for Binaural Perceptual Experiments

Crosstalk cancellation provides a means of delivering binaural stimuli to a listener for psychoacoustic research which avoids many of the problems of using headphones in experiments. Using a highly sensitive discrimination paradigm, which addressed a variety of issues in previous, headphone-based experiments, this study aimed to determine whether a system using individual crosstalk cancellation filters can present binaural stimuli that are perceptually indistinguishable from a real sound source. The fast deconvolution with frequency-dependent regularization method was used to design crosstalk cancellation filters. The reproduction loudspeakers were positioned at ±90° azimuth, and the synthesized location was 0° azimuth. Eight listeners were tested with noise, click trains, and pulsed tone stimuli. For the pulsed tone stimuli subjects were unable to discriminate between real and virtual sources. For the noise and click stimuli discrimination was marginally above chance, but well below the threshold of detection. That is, weak cues did exist but they were almost completely unreliable. The results suggest that this method of producing individualized crosstalk cancellation filters is suitable for binaural perceptual experiments.