An improved anthropometry-based customization method of individual head-related transfer functions

Individual head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) are necessary for rendering authentic spatial perceptions in spatial audio applications. To obtain individual HRTFs while avoiding tedious and complicated measurement and calculation, an improved customization method based on anthropometry matching is proposed. In the method, a set of HRTFs, which is the best match to the pinna shape of the listener using four pinna-related anatomical parameters, is selected as the listener's individual HRTFs from a pre-acquired HRTF baseline database. A series of subject localization experiments was conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method compared with the existing method. Results show that the median-plane localization performance of the customization method proposed in the present work is prior to the existing method, though performance improvement varies with source position.