Directional characteristics for different in-ear recording points

An earphone system is presented, that enables the listener to hear the sound sources and acoustics of the surroundings as close to real life as possible. The capturing of the surrounding sound is achieved by mounting a microphone on the outside of insert earphones and simultaneously record and play-back the sound. In this paper, measurements with different in-ear recording positions are conducted on nine subjects. The measurements are used for finding the optimal microphone position. The results show that spatial information equivalent to ears without insert earphones can be preserved up to around 4-5 kHz.