Javier Gómez Bolaños, Ville Pulkki, Aki Mäkivirta

Headphone stereo enhancement using equalized binaural responses to preserve headphone sound quality

Companion page for a paper submitted to the 2016 AES International Conference on Headphone Technology, Aalborg, Denmark, August 24–26, 2016

Abstract

A criteria for equalizing the output of binaural stereo rendering networks in order to preserve the sound quality of the headphone is described and evaluated. This equalization process aims to flatten the magnitude at the output of the binaural network for stereo reproduction. The equalization criteria is evaluated using listening tests where different binaural filter designs were used. The results showed that flattening the output of the binaural stereo network does not degrades the timbre quality of the headphone as much as the lack of accurate binaural information degrades the spatial quality of the reproduction. Furthermore, post equalization of measured binaural responses was found to reproduce better the expectations of the test participants for virtual stereo reproduction over loudspeakers.

Demos

Instructions: Click on the Play button to listen to a sample (reproduced in a continuous loop). Click on a different case to switch to the corresponding sample for direct comparison.