Evaluation of binaural reproduction systems from behavioral patterns in a six-degrees-of-freedom wayfinding task

This paper proposes a new method for evaluating real-time binaural reproduction systems by means of a wayfinding task in six degrees of freedom. Participants physically walk to sound objects in a virtual reality created by a head-mounted display and binaural audio. We show how the localization accuracy of spatial audio rendering is reflected by objective measures of the participants' behavior. The method allows for comparative evaluation of different rendering systems as well as the subjective assessment of the quality of experience.

I. Introduction

Quality evaluation of spatial sound systems in virtual reality (VR) applications is challenging but vital for the success of VR. A common methodology applied today in audio quality evaluations is the multiple stimulus with hidden reference and anchor (MUSHRA) test setup [1], where multiple test items are evaluated at once, comparing them to a predefined reference along varying sets of unidimensional perceptual scales [2]. An important perceptual attribute in spatial sound quality evaluation is the localization accuracy, which is under investigation in this study.