A Perceptual Study on the Plausibility of Binaural Rendering in Anechoic Environments

Plausibility has become a widely used paradigm for evaluating binaural audio for augmented reality. Although several studies have evaluated the plausibility of different binaural rendering techniques, it is not clear which parameters contribute to plausibility and to what extent. The present study attempts to fill this gap and presents the results of five listening experiments systematically investigating the impact of different parameters. A first plausibility test performed in anechoic conditions assessed the plausibility of nonindividual head-related transfer-function rendering. In four subsequent experiments, the influence of spherical harmonics truncation order, visual cues, small translational head movements, and different head-related transfer-function sets is assessed. Overall, the results indicate that even large manipulations of the rendering system have surprisingly little impact on the estimated d’.