Design and evaluation of Binaural auditory rendering for CAVEs

We describe an experiment whose goal is to investigate the usage of different audio rendering techniques delivered through headphones while walking inside a wide four-side CAVE environment. In our experiment, participants had to physically walked along a virtual path exposed to different auditory stimuli. Each subject was exposed to three conditions: Stereo, Binaural sound spatially congruent with visual and binaural sound spatially incongruent with visuals and had to rate subjectively each. The results of the experiment showed increased preference ratings for the binaural audio rendering, followed by stereo rendering. As expected incongruent spatial cues were ranked significantly lower. Binaural rendering can deliver an increased immersive experience and do no require specialized hardware.