Pinna Morphological Parameters Influencing HRTF Sets
Head-Related Transfer Functions (HRTFs) are one of the main aspects of binaural rendering. By definition, these functions express the deep linkage that exists between hearing and morphology especially of the torso, head and ears. Although the perceptive effects of HRTFs is undeniable, the exact influence of the human morphology is still unclear. Its reduction into few anthropometric measurements have led to numerous studies aiming at establishing a ranking of these parameters. However, no consensus has yet been set. In this paper, we study the influence of the anthropometric measurements of the ear, as defined by the CIPIC database, on the HRTFs. This is done through the computation of HRTFs by Fast Multipole Boundary Element Method (FM-BEM) from a parametric model of torso, head and ears. Their variations are measured with 4 different spectral metrics over 4 frequency bands spanning from 0 to 16kHz. Our contribution is the establishment of a ranking of the selected parameters and a comparison to what has already been obtained by the community. Additionally, a discussion over the relevance of each approach is conducted, especially when it relies on the CIPIC data, as well as a discussion over the CIPIC database limitations.