Vertical Amplitude Panning for Various Types of Sound Sources

It is widely known that the vertical localisation of a real source relies on spectral cues. In order to examine the influence of source spectrum on the accuracy of vertical amplitude panning, the present study conducted subjective localisation tests using six sound sources with different spectral characteristics: broadband, low-passed and high-passed pink noises as well as speech, bird and tank shot recordings. Results generally indicated that the localisation accuracy of vertical amplitude panning was poor regardless of the source type. However, lower or upper response biases observed in the results were found to be significantly dependent on the target panning angle and the type of sound source. The bird and tank shot sources tended to have upper biases regardless of the target angle. The so-called ‘pitch-height’ effect was observed for low-passed and high-passed noise sources, but this was not consistent with the target angle. Overall, the results suggest that the localisation of elevated phantom source is significantly frequency-dependant.