OpenAural

Using both ears the human brain processes both monaural and inter-aural cues resulting from the scattering of sound by the head and torso in order to localise the source of a sound. A common method to replicate these cues for playback has been to build a human dummy head and torso simulator (HATS) and place microphones at each ear canal to replicate the effect the human anatomy has on the sound field.

A binaural device was successfully designed for manufacture on a range of 3D printers. Full details of the design and experimental validation can be found here:

O’Connor D, Kennedy J. An evaluation of 3D printing for the manufacture of a binaural recording device. Applied Acoustics. 2021 Jan 1;171:107610.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apacoust.2020.107610

The excellent agreement between the developed system and the BEM simulations demonstrates the validity of the system for many acoustic problems. At present the developed system is being used for subjective listening tests in th