Lower-order ARMA Modeling of Head-Related Transfer Functions for Sound-Field Synthesis Systme

A new method for efficient modeling of the Head-Related Transfer Functions(HRTF's) without loss of any directional information is proposed. In this paper, the HRTF's were empirically measured in a real room and modeled as the ARMA models with common AR coefficients and different MA coefficients. To assess the validity of the proposed ARMA model, psychophysical tests show that the proposed ARMA model, in comparison with the conventional MA model, requires a small number of parameters to represent empirical HRTF's and improves the back-to-front confusions in sound-field localization. Thus, significant simplifications in the implementations of sound-field synthesis systems could be obtained by using the proposed ARMA model.