HRTF Measurements of a KEMAR Dummy-Head Microphone

Bill Gardner and Keith Martin
MIT Media Lab

Abstract:

An extensive set of head-related transfer function (HRTF) measurements of a KEMAR dummy head microphone was completed in May, 1994. The measurements consist of the left and right ear impulse responses from a Realistic Optimus Pro 7 loudspeaker mounted 1.4 meters from the KEMAR. Maximum length (ML) pseudo-random binary sequences were used to obtain the impulse responses at a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz. A total of 710 different positions were sampled at elevations from -40 degrees to +90 degrees. Also measured were the impulse response of the speaker in free field and several headphones placed on the KEMAR. This data is being made available to the research community on the Internet via anonymous FTP and the World Wide Web.

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Keith, KEMAR, and Bill in MIT's anechoic chamber.

The ftp and html archive is maintained by Bill Gardner, billg@media.mit.edu and Keith Martin, kdm@media.mit.edu. It contains a set of head-related transfer function (HRTF) measurements of a KEMAR dummy-head microphone and related software.

The archive contains:

README (1K) - A brief description of the archive

KEMAR-FAQ.txt (25K) - Frequently Asked Questions - read this

compact.tar.Z (200K) - Compact HRTF measurements

compact.zip (226K) - Compact HRTF measurements, Windows zip file

full.tar.Z (1.3M) - Complete set of HRTF measurements, speaker and headphone responses

full.zip (1.4M) - Complete set of HRTF measurements, Windows zip file

headphones+spkr.zip (41K) - Speaker and headphone responses, Windows zip file

hrtfdoc.ps (116K) - Postscript documentation on the HRTF data

hrtfdoc.txt (18K) - Text-only version of hrtfdoc.ps

diffuse.tar.Z (197K) - diffuse-field equalized HRTFs (44.1 kHz)

diffuse.zip (221K) - diffuse-field equalized HRTFs (44.1 kHz), Windows zip file

diffuse32k.tar.Z (157K) - above resampled to 32kHz sampling rate

3Daudio.tar.Z (203K) - demonstration 3D audio spatializer for SGI Indigos

matlab_scripts.tar.Z (11K) - useful MATLAB scripts for processing data

The file hrtfdoc contains a detailed description of the data and the measurement technique. It is also available online as an html document (hrtfdoc.html). It may also be obtained through the Media Lab as Perceptual Computing Technical Report #280. Note that the diffuse-field equalized HRTFs, 3D audio program, MATLAB scripts, and Windows zip format files were added to this archive after the documentation was written.

The Windows zip format files were generously provided by Robert Cain.

This data is Copyright 1994 by the MIT Media Laboratory. It is provided free with no restrictions on use, provided the authors are cited when the data is used in any research or commercial application.

Bill Gardner billg@media.mit.edu and Keith Martin kdm@media.mit.edu

MIT Media Lab Machine Listening Group

May 18, 1994 (last revised July 18, 2000)