Representation of sound localization transfer function and psychoacoustical evaluation

摘要

A method is proposed for determinin grepresentatives of the sound localization transfer function (SLTF) aiming at a compromise between feasibility and licalization accuracy. This method is based on principal components analysis (PCA). The magnitudes of SLTF measured at both ears of 56 subjects for 24 targets were modelled by linear combination of six principal components (PC). For each target and ear, the representative was determined to be the SLTF whose weights of PC contributing to the magnitude best approximated the average over subjects. The effectiveness of the representatives was evaluated both statistically and psychoacoustically. The statistical analysis indicates that the individual distribution of the weights of PC is assumed to be a six-dimensional normal distribution that is densest around the average. The discrepancy of the representatives from the average is within 1.5 percent of the individual accumulation. The psychoacoustical evaluation for 28 of the subjects indicates that the increase in the front/back confusion rate in the use of representatives is significant for frontal targets, but not for other targets. The lateral judgement is robust against SLTFs for all targets tested. However, considerable individual dispersion of the front/back confusion rate hindered from determining the allowance of the discrepancy between individual SLTFs and the representatives for acceptable localization accruacy.