ABSTRACT
The aim of virtual, or three-dimensional, audio systems is to give a listener the impression of being immersed in a virtual acoustic environment. There are two basic approaches to virtual audio: binaural and soundfield. The aim of binaural systems is to reproduce only at the listener’s ears the acoustic pressures that would result if the listener were physically present in the environment being virtualized. The chapter focuses on single-user binaural systems. In delivering binaural audio to a single listener, the aim is to control the acoustic pressure at each of the listener’s ears as accurately as possible. If the binaural signals are simply played through their respective loudspeakers, then the “crosstalk” signal that arrives at each ear from the opposite loudspeaker must be removed. The chapter considers several techniques that have been proposed to make the crosstalk cancellation system perform better in practical situations.
