Spatial track transition effects for headphone listening

In this paper we study the use of different spatial processing techniques to create audio effects for forced transitions between music tracks in headphone listening. The audio effect encompasses a movement of the initially playing track to the side of the listener while the next track to be played moves into a central position simultaneously. We compare seven different methods for creating this effect in a listening test where the task of the user is to characterize the span of the spatial movement of audio play list items around the listener's head. The methods used range from amplitude panning up to full Head Related Transfer Function (HRTF) rendering. It is found that a computationally efficient method using time-varying interaural time differences is equally effective in creating a large spatial span as the full HRTF rendering method.