Auditory displays using loudspeaker reproduction in a car cabin

Playback of binaural sounds generated by an auditory display is normally made by headphones. For automotive applications such as driving simulation or sound design, however, loudspeaker reproduction is often required. A setup using a cabin-specific four-channel loudspeaker arrangement is presented and discussed. In order to get a sufficient 3-D sound, the loudspeakers have to be equalized carefully. Best results could be achieved using individualized HRTF sets. The quality of loudspeaker reproduction in comparison to headphone reproduction was evaluated by several psychoacoustic experiments. Localization and distance perception experiments show that loudspeaker reproduction does not achieve the same quality as individualized headphone reproduction. However, for simulator applications the achieved quality is quite sufficient.