A Signal-Processing-Based Simulation System for High-End Stereo Headsets

Abstract

In recent years, headphones have become increasingly popular worldwide. There are numerous models on the market today, varying in technical characteristics and offering different listening experiences. This article presents an application for simulating the sound response of specific headphone models by physically wearing others. In the future, for example, this application could help to guide people who already own a pair of headphones during the decision-making process of purchasing a new headphone model. However, the potential fields of application are much broader. An in-depth study of digital signal processing was carried out with the implementation of a computational model. Prior to this, an analysis was performed on impulse response measurements of specific headphones, which allowed for a better understanding of the behavior of each set of headphones. Finally, an evaluation of the entire system was conducted through a listening test. The analysis of the results showed that the software works reasonably well in replicating the target headphones. We hope that this work will stimulate further efforts in the same direction.