Evaluation of Digital Sound Spatialization Accuracy Over Commodity Audio Channels in a Personal Computer

This paper presents an analysis of the accuracy achievable in the spatialization of digital sound using generic head related transfer functions (HRTFs) played back over commodity audio channels readily available in most personal computers (PCs) now in market, using off-the-shelf headphones. We believe that this study is of interest because these are the conditions in which the vast majority of computer users actually experience 3D sound in consumer applications, such as games. Our analysis suggests that under these conditions localization is much less accurate to the sides of the head, and that there is an average localization error of approximately 15o in the azimuth range [-75o