Free database of low-frequency corrected head-related transfer functions and headphone compensation filters

V Erbes, M Geier, H Wierstorf, S Spors, "Free database of low-frequency corrected head-related transfer functions and headphone compensation filters," in 142nd Convention of the Audio Engineering Society, eBrief 325 (2017). [ link ] [ paper ]

Bibtex

@inproceedings{Erbes2017a,
    title     = {Free database of low-frequency corrected head-related transfer
                 functions and headphone compensation filters},
    author    = {Erbes, Vera and Geier, Matthias and Wierstorf, Hagen
                 and Spors, Sascha},
    booktitle = {142nd Convention of the Audio Engineering Society},
    address   = {Berlin, Germany},
    pages     = {eBrief 325},
    month     = {May},
    year      = {2017},
    url       = {http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=18700}
}

Abstract

A database of publicly available head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) of a KEMAR manikin together with headphone compensation filters for various headphone types is presented. The HRTFs are based on previously published data from Wierstorf et al. (2011) that have additionally been corrected for low frequencies. This compensates for missing information due to low excitation energy in this frequency range during the measurement and allows for shorter impulse responses. A further benefit is demonstrated by the interpolation of HRTFs via magnitude and phase that is only possible with consistent phase information. Both the low-frequency correction as well as the generation of the headphone compensation filters are accompanied by Matlab code to document the processing.

Supplementary material

The low frequency corrected HRTF database is available under 10.5281/zenodo.401041. The headphone compensation filters are available under 10.5281/zenodo.401042. Note, that the compensation filters are not suited for the low-frequency corrected HRTF data as the microphone positions varied between the two used KEMAR heads, but they can be used with the BRIR measurement of a rectangular loudspeaker array available under 10.14279/depositonce-87.6. For the low frequency corrected HRTFs there are headphone compensation filters available with the original - non low frequency corrected - release of the data at 10.5281/zenodo.55418.