The hearing system adapts well to phantom stereo images despite conflicting HRTF cues

Evidence

In the complex acoustics of many listening rooms, it is easy to imagine that the binaural hearing system might be confused at localizing a phantom image where there is no physical sound source that matches the collection of reflected sounds. For most soundstage images there is also the perceptual conflict caused by direct-sound HRTF cues related to sounds arriving from the wrong directions: ±30°. The hearing system copes with these anomalies amazingly well, as experience attests. However, it cannot be easy, compared to the room interaction “purity” of a single (mono) center source, as in (b), or a hard-panned left or right location (a). In fact, it is the perceptual simplicity of a center loudspeaker that creates conflict when it is combined with double-mono phantom images at other locations. — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 564

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s psychoacoustics grounding in HRTF localisation cues and how the auditory system resolves conflicting spatial information. — connects to: Individual HRTF measurements give the most accurate external ear emulation — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 1608; Stereo hearing exploits only one directional cue and the ear fills in the rest — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 750