Spatial hearing in the horizontal plane: The binaural system and its models
* Presenting author
Abstract:
Humans, like most other animals with airborne hearing, have developed a striking ability to localize sound sources in space. Unlike in the visual system where two dimensions are encoded on the sensory level - the auditory system has the additional challenge to generate this space from the signals at the two ears. It is thus unsurprising that neurons in the auditory brainstem are highly specialized for encoding the features necessary for this task. This contribution shortly reviews the underlying physiology but only for introducing an "engineering approach" to describe their implications on sound localization and other binaural perception phenomena. Subsequently, phenomenological as well as physiological modeling approaches are discussed aiming to provide an overview of binaural modeling at the intersection of acoustics, physiology, and perception.