Abstract:

The localization of virtual sound sources is an important approach to evaluating the performance of a virtual auditory display. This paper proposes a method to report the direction and distance of the perceived virtual source position using a tracker,and implements the method with computer software. The proposed method is then verified by experiments,with good repeatability of the reported position being achieved. With this method,the
standard deviations of distance,horizontal angle and elevation obtained from six measurements for fifteen positions respectively reach 0. 4 cm,0. 6° and 0. 5°. The variance analysis with a significance level of 0. 05 also indicates that the reported position is correct and reliable. Finally,the method is applied to practical virtual sound source localization. The results show that the proposed method,which is simpler than the conventional oral reporting method,helps to obtain localization results with low discreteness,especially for the reporting of distance; and that,with the help of the method,the judgment response time,which is the average of stable and dynamic judgment time,decreases from 19. 8 s to 7. 2 s. It is thus concluded that the proposed method can effectively reduce the difficulty and workload in the localization experiment of virtual sound sources.

Key words: acoustics, virtual auditory display, virtual sound source localization, tracker, head-related transfer function