Aural ID: How much is accuracy reduced due to ear growth over time?

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superb, modified 4 Years ago.

Aural ID: How much is accuracy reduced due to ear growth over time?

Youngling Posts: 7 Join Date: 7/10/19 Recent Posts

It is commonly known that our ears grow as we age. One study cites an average growth of 0.22mm per year for adults over 30. Other studies have shown that our localization abilities are not diminished because our brain is continually "re-calibrating" to our gradual increase in pinnae size.

This leads to my questions:

How long is an Aural ID good for? Eventually our brains adapt to a different size pinna. At what point does the sound begin to become colored, losing accuracy in frequency response and localization?

I'm guessing that a new Aural ID would be needed after a few years.

jani-oksanen, modified 4 Years ago.

RE: Aural ID: How much is accuracy reduced due to ear growth over time?

Jedi Master Posts: 449 Join Date: 3/30/17 Recent Posts

Thank you for your good question. I've asked reply from our R&D director and his reply is below:

It is true that our external rear grows during our life. As the main features of the HRTF include size of head, shoulders, location of the external ear on the head, as well as the details of the external ear size and structures reflecting audio, not all of these features are affected by growth. Our estimate is that the personal Aural ID is valid for critical work about 5...10 years, and probably longer as it is also a familiar reference to the person anyway so it's features have already been learned by the listener in earlier life, so it is likely that the Aural ID will remain very useful for a very long time. -Aki Mäkivirta

superb, modified 3 Years ago.

RE: Aural ID: How much is accuracy reduced due to ear growth over time?

Youngling Posts: 7 Join Date: 7/10/19 Recent Posts

Thanks for your reply. That was helpful information.

elsapo2001, modified 3 Years ago.

RE: Aural ID: How much is accuracy reduced due to ear growth over time?

Youngling Posts: 19 Join Date: 10/3/17 Recent Posts

What would be an Amazing technology is if Genelec comes out with a special Headphone and offer a new GLM module where it can offer a audiometry function. That way you can Room and ear match. Allow storing multiple user profiles so whatever engineer is working they can select their Aural ID and have the monitors automatically tune for that user.

roosje, modified 3 Years ago.

RE: Aural ID: How much is accuracy reduced due to ear growth over time?

Youngling Posts: 0 Join Date: 8/14/20 Recent Posts

This service may seem expensive, but it is an evidence-based solution that far outstrips the intuition-based headphone weakener that the headphone world seems quite set on. The solution for accurate tonal and spatial reproduction is individualized HRTF correction filters using headphones with low positional variation, well-characterized frequency response and dominantly minimum-phase behavior. All others are merely different presentations of a fundamentally distorted input signal in the irrational hope that 2 wrongs make a right or at least mitigate the flawed input in some arbitrary, totally unsystematic way. Genelec`s user manual explains more.

It is not as direct (or likely accurate) a method as the golden standard of using calibrated in-ear microphones and research-grade DSP, but it is also much cheaper and takes less hardware.