Tag: localisation

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aXMonitor Update: Personalised Binaural with SOFA Support

The aXMonitor plugins are today updated to version 1.3.2. If you have already bought one of the aXMonitor plugins, you can download the update from your account.  You should remove any old versions of the plugin from your system to avoid any conflicts.

Today’s update is all about getting more flexibility and personalisation for binaural rendering of Ambisoinics. This is probably the most requested feature update for any of my plugins, so I am very happy to be able to announce the new feature:

  • Load an HRTF stored in a .SOFA file for custom binaural rendering.

This allows you to produce binaural rendering for up to seventh order Ambisonics with whatever HRTF you want, providing you with the flexibility you need to produce the highest quality spatial audio content possible.

If you aren’t sure why so many people want personal HRTF support, keep reading.

Advantages of Personalised Binaural

Binaural 3D audio can be vastly improved by listening with a personalised HRTF (head related transfer function). It’s the auditory equivalent of wearing someone else’s glasses vs wearing your own. Sure, you can see most of what is going on with someone else’s glass, but you lose detail and precision. Wear your own and everything comes into focus!

With that in mind, the aXMonitor plugins have been updated to allow you to load a custom HRTF that is stored in a .SOFA file. Now you can use your own individual HRTF (if you have it) or one that you know works well for you. Once an HRTF has been loaded it will be available across to all instances of the plugin in other projects.

What is a .SOFA file?

A .SOFA file contains a lot of information about a measured HRTF (though it can be used for other things as well). You can read more about them here.

Where to get custom HRTFs

You can find a curated list of .SOFA databases here. The best thing to do is to try a few of them until you find one that gives you an accurate perception of the sound source directions. Pay particular attention to the elevation and front-back confusions, since these are what personalised HRTFs help most with.

If you want an HRTF that fits your head/ears exactly then your options are bit more limited. Either you can find somewhere, usually an academic research institute, that has an anechoic chamber and the appropriate equipment. Then you put some microphones in your ears and sit still for 20-120 minutes (depending on their system). Once it’s done, you have your HRTF!

But if you don’t fancy going to all of that trouble, there are some options for getting a personalised HRTF more easily. A method by 3D Sound Labs requires only a small number of photographs and they claim good results. Finnish company IDA also offers a similar service.

Get the aXMonitor

So if you like the sound of customised binaural rendering then you can purchase the aXMonitor from my online shop. Doing so will help support independent development of tools for spatial audio.


a1Monitor


a3Monitor


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What Is… Spatial Hearing?

This post is part of the What Is… series that explains spatial audio techniques and terminology.

Spatial hearing is how we are able to locate the direction of a sound source. This is generally split in to azimuth (left/right) and elevation (vertical) localisations. Knowing how we localise is essential to understanding the spatial audio technologies. Human spatial hearing is a complex topic with lots of subtleties so we’ll ease in with some of the main concepts.

Interaural Time Difference (ITD)

ITD for a Neumann KU100 dummy head averaged across all frequencies below 1400 Hz
ITD for a Neumann KU100 dummy head averaged across all frequencies below 1400 Hz

Consider a single sound source near to a listener. The sound source will radiate sound waves that will travel through the air to listener. These waves will reach the nearer (ipsilateral) ear of the listener earlier than the further (contralateral). This produces a time difference between the signals at both eardrums known as the interaural time difference (ITD). The brain can extract the time difference by comparing the two signals and will use this as an estimate of the direction of the sound. Whichever ear is leading in time dictates whether the sound is heard to the left or the right. The graph shows the average ITD for frequencies up to 1400 Hz. It has a clear sinusoidal shape that varies predictably with azimuth, making it a useful localisation cue.

ITD cues are mainly evaluated at low frequencies (below approximately 1400 Hz). This is the frequency range at which the wavelength of the sound is long enough when compared to the size of the head to avoid phase ambiguity. Above this frequency the phase can “wrap” around and it not possible to tell if there have been, say, 0.5 cycles, 1.5 cycles etc.

Luckily, we can use another method to localise in higher frequencies.

Interaural Level Difference (ILD)

Interaural level difference (ILD) for a Neumann KU100 dummy head in the horizontal plane up to 15 kHz

As frequency increases and the wavelength becomes shorter than the size of the listener’s head, acoustic shadowing becomes important, producing an interaural level difference (ILD). The shadowing causes the level at the contralateral ear to be reduced compared to the ipsilateral. This is in contrast to low frequencies where the wavelengths are so large that the level differences to not vary significantly with source direction (unless the sound source is very close!).

Where ITD exhibits a sinusoidal shape, making direction estimation relatively simple, ILD can vary in a complex manner with source direction. This is due to how the sound waves interact with the head and doesn’t mean that the biggest level difference happens as \(pm90^circ\). In fact, this ILD is actually lower at \(pm90^circ\) than at some less lateral positions. This is known as the acoustic bright spot. The complex ILD patterns are shown in the graph where the more yellow/blue the colour the larger the ILD. Yellow means the left ear is greater than the right and blue the right is greater than the left.

ITD and ILD are work well for differentiating between left and right. But imagine a sound source starts directly infront of you, moves in an arc over your head to finish directly behind you. At no point do ITD and ILD have any value other than zero but we can still perceive the elevation of the sound source. How are we able to do this?

Spectral Cues

The frequency spectra for a sound source directly in front of and above the listener. Note the significant notch at 8 kHz for the frontal source that is missing in the elevated source.
The frequency spectra for a sound source directly in front of and above the listener. Note the significant notch at 8 kHz for the frontal source that is missing in the elevated source.

The outer ears (pinnae) are a very complex shape. They cause the sounds to be filtered in a way that is highly direction dependent. This leads to peaks and notches in the frequency response of the source spectrum that can be used to evaluate the direction, primarily for elevation. The frequencies of the peaks and notches are highly individual, depending strongly on the shape of the outer ears. This is something that the brain learns and it can use this internal template to incoming sounds and give an estimate of localisation.

For example, the graph to the left shows the frequency spectra for a sound source at two different positions: in front and above. The frontal source has a deep notch at 8 kHz which is not the case for the elevated source. This could be used to differentiate between the two elevations, even though the signals at the left and right ears would be (nearly) identical.

Localisation accuracy tends to be much less accurate for elevation than it is for azimuthal (left/right) judgements. This can have implications for how we might design a spatial audio system or on how well they can work.

Is that it?

Not by a long shot! We haven’t covered things like interaural envelope difference, distance estimation, the effect of head movement, the precedence effect, the ventriloquist effect but these are the main principles we need to understand to get to grips with the basics of spatial audio.