Persistence of HRTF-individualisation benefits with fully individualised reverberant rendering

Determine whether the behavioural effects of HRTF individualisation persist in realistic reverberant environments when both direct and reflected sound components are rendered with fully individualised binaural room impulse responses.

Background

In the experiment, individualisation was applied only to the direct sound path, while the reverberant field used a non-individualised KEMAR-based binaural room impulse response. Consequently, the disappearance of HRTF-dependent effects under reverberation may reflect the rendering configuration rather than a general property of reverberant spatial hearing.

The authors identify fully individualised rendering of direct and reflected sound as a necessary test of whether the observed individualisation benefits remain in more realistic acoustic environments.

References

Fully individualised rendering of both direct and reflected sound would provide a cleaner test of whether the effects observed here persist in more realistic acoustic environments.

— Beyond Localisation Accuracy: Sensorimotor Effects of HRTF Individualisation  (2609.08422 - Missoni et al., 8 Sep 2026) in Conclusion and future directions, paragraph “Conclusion and future directions. Towards realistic listening tests”