This paper presents a stereo expansion method for hard panned music of the 1960s and 1970s over headphones. Previous studies have attempted to externalize music across all genres, with most subjective tests ranking the unprocessed original as the most preferred version. The vast amount of recording and mixing techniques indicates that there may be more than one method of externalizing music for headphone listening. The algorithm “earGoggles” is a head-related transfer function (HRTF) model combined with room reflection simulation, crafted to externalize music with a correlation of 0.5 and below, produced from the era of early stereo mixing techniques. A subjective test was conducted in which subjects submitted preference ratings of four versions of seven programs: earGoggles, crosstalk simulation from the HRTF model, a room model, and the original unprocessed version. Experiment results showed that the mean overall preference rating was for the earGoggles algorithm, and least preferred was the original unprocessed version.
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https://aes2.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=18291
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