From: malcolm@interval.com (Malcolm Slaney)
Date: Mon, 8 Jan 1996 15:46:11 -0800
Subject: Externalization of Virtual Sound (at SKI)
Message-Id: <v0213050aad175d241a26@[199.170.106.94]>

There is no Hearing Seminar this week.  Instead, Jack Loomis from UCSB will
be talking about externalization of virtual sound at the Smith-Kettlewell
Institute in San Francisco.

Externalizing virtual sound is hard!  We know how to measure HRTF (Head
Related Transfer Functions) so that we can recreate the sound field
entering the ear canal.  But when we play the sounds back, they often sound
like they are coming from inside the head.  Why is this?

I don't have an abstract for this talk.  But a quick literature search
turned up a similar paper by Dr. Loomis.  I've attached it to the end of
this note.

The CCRMA Hearing Seminar returns on January 18th with a talk by Bev
Wright.  She will be discussing the detection of auditory signals with
unexpected temporal properties. More details and the rest of the calendar
will follow later this week.

See you at the Hearing Seminar.

-- Malcolm




Date: Mon, 8 Jan 96 10:46:51 PST
From: jona@skivs.ski.org (Jona Countie)
To: malcolm@interval.com
Subject: Smith-Kettlewell Colloquia


Speaker:                Jack Loomis, Ph.D.
                        University of California at Santa Barbara
                        Dept. of Psychology

Title:                  "Externalization of virtual sound"

Host:                   John Brabyn
                        561-1619

Date/Time:              Thursday, January 11, 1996 @ 12:00 Noon
                        SKERI 2nd Floor Conference Room
                        2232 Webster St., San Francisco

Smith-Kettlewell is located at the California Pacific Medical Center campus
at Clay and Webster Streets, in Pacific Heights.




Related Paper..... (just FYI)


TITLE:           Active localization of virtual sounds.
AUTHOR:          Loomis, Jack M.  (U California, Santa Barbara, US)
                 Hebert, Chick
                 Cicinelli, Joseph G.
PUBLICATION:     Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.  1990 Oct Vol
                   88(4) 1757-1764.  (ISSN 00014966)
ABSTRACT:  Analyzed the responses of 5 Ss to 18 target locations for virtual
   and real sounds to illustrate the utility of an effective virtual sound
   display for investigating the active localization of sound sources. In 3 Ss
   performance was comparable in real and virtual conditions on 3 of 4
   measures, which suggests that a simple virtual display that approximates
   most of the primary cues for range and azimuth can create the impression of
   external sounds that Ss can readily locate. Implications include the ability
   to provide navigation information to the blind traveler.