Background

Head-Related Transfer Functions (HRTFs) represent an acoustic filtering response of humans’ outer ear, head, and torso. This natural filtering system plays a key role in human binaural auditory systems that allows people to not only hear but also to perceive the direction of incoming sounds. The HRTF characterizes how a human ear receives sounds from a point in space, and depends on, for example, the shapes of a person’s head, pinna, and torso. Accurate estimations of HRTFs for human subjects are crucial in augmented or virtual realities applications, among other applications. Unfortunately, approaches for HRTF estimation generally rely on specialized devices or lengthy measurement processes. Additionally, using another person’s HRTF, or a generic HRTF, will lead to errors in