3D sound and bone conducting earphones
Have been hunting for research papers lately, looking for studies on the spatialization of sound with bone conducting earphones. Here are a couple of interesting papers I’ve been able to find so far:
Stanley, R. M., & Walker, B. N. (2006). Lateralizaton of sounds using bone-conduction headsets. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES2006), San Francisco, CA (16-20 October).
Aleksander Väljamäe, A.; Tajadura-Jiménez, A.; Larsson, P.; Västfjäll, D. and Kleiner, M. (2008) Binaural bone-conducted sound in virtual environments: Evaluation of a portable, multimodal motion simulator prototype. Acoustical Science and Technology Vol. 29 (2008) , No. 2 pp.149-155
Apparently, the idea of bone related transfer functions is not completely impossible - that is the focus of Mr. Stanley’s research. Some issues with bone conducting sound much faster than air, especially with low frequencies, which seriously challenges the use of inter-aural time differences as a spatial cue. Apparently the first tests manage, though, to produce lateralization even if the amplitude difference between ears is not equivalent to what we see in air-conducted sound. Cool.
