Binaural auralization based on spherical‐harmonics beamforming

The binaural auralization of a 3D sound field using spherical‐harmonics beamforming (SHB) techniques was investigated and compared with the traditional method using a dummy head. The new procedure was verified by comparing simulated room impulse responses with directly measured ones both monaurally and binaurally. The objective comparisons show that there is good agreement in the frequency range between 0.1 to 6.4 kHz. Psychoacoustic attributes of multi‐channel reproduced sounds were measured in a listening experiment to validate the method subjectively. The results show that subjective ratings of the width, spaciousness and preference of different audio reproduction modes auralized based on SHB were not significantly different from those obtained for dummy head measurements. Thus binaural synthesis using SHB may be a useful tool to reproduce a 3D sound field binaurally while saving considerably on measurement time because head rotation can be simulated based on a single recording.