Customizable Auditory Displays

High-quality virtual audio scene rendering is a must for emerging virtual and augmented reality applications, for perceptual user interfaces, and sonification of data. Personalization of HRTF is necessary in applications where perceptual realism and correct elevation perception is critical. We describe algorithms for creation of virtual auditory spaces by rendering cues that arise from anatomical scattering, environmental scattering, and dynamical effects. We use a novel way of personalizing the head related transfer functions (HRTFs) from a database, based on anatomical measurements. Details of algorithms for HRTF interpolation, room impulse response creation, HRTF selection from a database, and audio scene presentation are presented. Our system runs in real time on an office PC without specialized DSP hardware.