Rapid collection of head related transfer functions and comparison to free-field listening

Although virtual audio display systems have now been in existence for more than 20 years, the procedures used to collect head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) on human listeners and implement them in head-tracked virtual audio display systems have not been standardized. In this chapter, we describe a procedure for virtual audio synthesis that allows a full set of individualized HRTFs to be collected in less than ten minutes and implemented immediately in a real-time, head-tracked virtual audio display. We also present the results of a validation experiment that show that this procedure produces virtual auditory localization accuracy that is comparable to that obtained with real sound sources in the free field.