Toward a Standard Listener-Independent HRTF to Facilitate Long-Term Adaptation

Head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) are used in auditory applications for spatializing virtual sound sources. Listener-specific HRTFs, which aim at mimicking the filtering of the head, torso, and pinnae of a specific listener, improve the perceived quality of virtual sound compared to using non-individualized HRTFs. However, using listener-specific HRTFs may not be accessible for everyone. Here, the authors propose as an alternative to take advantage of the adaptation abilities of human listeners to a new set of HRTFs. They claim that agreeing upon a single listener-independent set of HRTFs has beneficial effects for long-term adaptation compared to using several, potentially severely different HRTFs. Thus, the Non-individual Ear MOdel (NEMO) initiative is a first step toward a standardized listener-independent set of HRTFs to be used across applications as an alternative to individualization. A prototype, NEMObeta, is presented to explicitly encourage external feedback from the spatial audio community and to agree on a complete list of requirements for the future HRTF selection.