Perspective Chapter: Modern Acquisition of Personalised Head-Related Transfer Functions – An Overview

Head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) describe the spatial filtering of acoustic signals by a listener’s anatomy. With the increase of computational power, HRTFs are nowadays more and more used for the spatialised headphone playback of 3D sounds, thus enabling personalised binaural audio playback. HRTFs are traditionally measured acoustically and various measurement systems have been set up worldwide. Despite the trend to develop more user-friendly systems and as an alternative to the most expensive and rather elaborate measurements, HRTFs can also be numerically calculated, provided an accurate representation of the 3D geometry of head and ears exists. While under optimal conditions, it is possible to generate said 3D geometries even from 2D photos of a listener, the geometry acquisition is still a subject of research. In this chapter, we review the requirements and state-of-the-art methods for obtaining personalised HRTFs, focusing on the recent advances in numerical HRTF calculation.