Development of a simulation system of the audiovisual environment using the headphone and head-mounted display

Subjective evaluation of the sound environment of the urban areas has been widely investigated by using various kinds of acoustic simulation method in laboratories. On the other hand, the visual stimulus such as video presentation can also be considered to influence the sound evaluation results. Then we herein propose a simulation system of the audiovisual environment using the headphone and head-mounted display. By using the head-mounted display, subjective influence caused by providing a realistic panoramic visualization of the target field can be investigated. To provide realistically simulated sound field, the direction of the sound incidence which momentarily changes depending on the head rotation is dynamically considered by combining the recorded sound data by 6-channel directional microphone, head-related transfer functions, and the angular data of the head direction obtained by the gyro sensor installed in the head-mounted display. To validate basic performance of the proposed simulation system, a subjective evaluation test of the sound localization was performed. As a result, appropriate sound-localization results when the subjects freely rotate their head direction were confirmed. Application of the system to subjective evaluation test of both audiovisual environment is our future work.