Subjects wearing communications or hearing protection headsets lose the ability to localize sound accurately. Here we describe a hearing restoration headset designed to restore a user’s natural hearing by processing signals from an array of microphones using a filter-and-sum technique and presenting the result to the user via the headset’s speakers. The filters are designed using a phase compensation technique for mapping the microphone array manifolds (or directional transfer functions) onto the target HRTFs. To optimize the performance of the system, a 3-D numerical model of a KEMAR mannequin with headset was built and verified experimentally up to 12 KHz. The numerical model was used to optimize a three microphone array that demonstrated low reconstruction error up to 12 KHz.

Authors: Johnson, Marty; Gillett, Philip; Perini, Efrain; Toso, Alessandro; Harris, Daniel
Affiliations: Sennheiser Research Laboratory, Palo Alto, CA, USA; Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA(See document for exact affiliation information.)
AES Convention: 127 (October 2009) Paper Number: 7910
Publication Date: October 1, 2009 Import into BibTeX
Subject: Spatial Audio
Permalink: https://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=15105

Click to purchase paper as a non-member or login as an AES member. If your company or school subscribes to the E-Library then switch to the institutional version. If you are not an AES member and would like to subscribe to the E-Library then Join the AES!

This paper costs $33 for non-members and is free for AES members and E-Library subscribers.

Learn more about the AES E-Library

E-Library Location: (CD 127Papers)   /127/7910.pdf

Start a discussion about this paper!