Evaluation of hear-through sound localization
Georgios N. Marentakis, Rudolfs Liepins · 2014
Listening and interacting with audio commonly relies on using earphones which limit the ability of users to perceive their auditory environment. Earphone sets that integrate miniature microphones on their exterior can, however, be used to hear-through the auditory environment. We present an evaluation study in which sound localization when wearing such a hear-through system is compared to normal earphones, open headphones and unblocked ears. Although localization performance is improved compared to open headphones, we find that it is compromised in comparison to listening without earphones because confusions of sound direction increase and localization judgment distributions are more dispersed and show a weaker correlation to the test directions. The implications of the results to human computer interaction and possible improvements to hear-through system design are discussed.