The interaural time difference in binaural synthesis

A previous investigation showed that head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) can be implemented by a minimum phase function for each ear and a pure delay as interaural time difference (ITD). The directional properties of this ITD were investigated. It was found that several well-known methods cannot be used to find the correct ITD. Instead a simple and fast method was developed for calculating the ITD. Furthermore, comparison was made of ITDs determined from the HRTFs of people, an artificial head, geometric head models, and formulae from the literature. The ITD of the artificial head was seen to correspond closely to the mean value of people. On the other hand the geometrical models and the formulae were found to be inadequate to describe the ITD for all directions. Supported by STVF/FTP.