Ear Centering for Accurate Synthesis of Near-Field Head-Related Transfer Functions †

The head-related transfer function (HRTF) is a major tool in spatial sound technology. The HRTF for a point source is defined as the ratio between the sound pressure at the ear position and the free-field sound pressure at a reference position. The reference is typically placed at the center of the listener’s head. When using the spherical Fourier transform (SFT) and distance-varying filters (DVF) to synthesize HRTFs for point sources very close to the head, the spherical symmetry of the model around the head center does not allow for distinguishing between the ear position and the head center. Ear centering is a technique that overcomes this source of inaccuracy by translating the reference position. Hitherto, plane-wave (PW) translation operators have yield effective ear centering when synthesizing far-field HRTFs. We propose spherical-wave (SW) translation operators for ear centering required in the accurate synthesis of near-field HRTFs. We contrasted the performance of PW and SW ear centering. The synthesis errors decreased consistently when applying SW ear centering and the enhancement was observed up to the maximum frequency determined by the spherical grid.