Taking Head Movements into Account in Measurement of Spatial Attributes

Over recent years, a number of objective hearing models have been developed that attempt to analyse the spatial performance of audio systems in a manner that relates to how sound is perceived by humans 1, 2, 3 – i.e., the models predict the attributes of a sound in a way that is meaningful to human listeners, using scales and categories that are similar to those which a listener would use to describe the sound, as opposed to more conventional objective measurements which quantify physical or electrical properties on relatively unintuitive scales. A number of these models have been developed for spatial impression, including those that predict the perceived location and width of a sound source (such as a musical instrument or a person speaking), and the perceived width of an acoustical environment (i.e. the sound of the room in which the sound source is placed). Now that accurate models have been created, it is necessary to develop practical and perceptually relevant methods with which to apply them.