AES Europe 2026

The significance of individual versus generic HRTFs in
Virtual Audio can be difficult to ascertain given the
variety of scenarios; tasks related to the spatial
listening experience. Are we working on the most
significant 80% of the success or fine-tuning the last 5%
of the sound quality? When the VR users are blind it is
fair to assume that the quality of the spatial audio
becomes a critical; more important factor. This is the
challenge as we see it. In the present project, we will
investigate options for powerful game components relying on
spatialized sound, using effects that are natural for the
blind gamer. As a first step, we have implemented a test
platform, where different options for HRTFs will exist,;
where the on-boarding process shall reveal the optimal
solution for the given user. The test scenario is inspired
by a “classical” shooting down sound sources scenario,
where we will vary e.g. the task definition, success
criteria (hit zone, number of attempts; elapsed time) as
well as eavesdropping game internal parameters of more
complex nature (e.g. navigation trajectories). The results
will display the variation in normal seeing listeners;
produce normative data for later comparisons with blind
participants. The platform also includes options for simple
mirror-image room models,; standardized reverberation,
which will be used in later tests to learn, whether the
room acoustics may play a stronger role for the blind
gamers’ navigation; source identification, than for
normal seeing listeners.