Title: Analysis of the spatial discrimination threshold of head-related transfer function magnitude 

Author: LIU Yu; XIE Bosun; YU Guangzheng; RUI Yuanqing 

Affiliation: Acoustic Lab., Physics Dept., South China University of Technology et al.  

Abstract: A binaural-loudness-model-based method for evaluating the spatial discrimination threshold of magnitudes of head-related transfer function(HRTF) is proposed. As the input of the binaural loudness model, the HRTF magnitude variations caused by spatial position variations were firstly calculated from a high-resolution HRTF dataset. Then, three perceptualrelevant parameters, namely interaural loudness level difference, binaural loudness level spectra, and total binaural loudness level, were derived from the binaural loudness model. Finally, the spatial discrimination thresholds of HRTF magnitude were evaluated according to just-noticedifference of the above-mentioned perceptual-relevant parameters. A series of psychoacoustic experiments was also conducted to obtain the spatial discrimination threshold of HRTF magnitudes. Results indicate that the threshold derived from the proposed binaural-loudness-modelbased method is consistent with that obtained from the traditional psychoacoustic experiment, validating the effectiveness of the proposed method.