Psychoacoustic evaluation of systems for delivering spatialized augmented-reality audio

Spatialized augmented-reality audio systems superimpose virtual sound sources onto sounds from a real acoustic environment. Applications include assistance for visually impaired users, guidance systems, teleconferencing, attention-focusing systems, and electronic games. In the proposed system, acoustically transparent earpieces are used to allow environmental sounds to be heard directly while the virtual reality is created electronically. The results show that the listener can localize virtual sound sources as accurately as when using earphones, which are standard for virtual auditory space presentation, while there is only minor degradation in his ability to localize real sound sources.