A couple of years ago, during the development of my degree project. I decided to begin the ambitious task of developing audio software to simulate the behavior of a binaural head. For this purpose, I work along with my colleague and friend Teo Rodriguez, and as soon as the project started we faced several setbacks. After doing some research and debating about the approach that we wanted to take, we decided to use impulse responses to obtain an accurate emulation of the dummy head’s behavior, but the main problem is that these I.R. must be taken around the head and we did not know how many of them we could take in order to achieve convincing results. We found relief after finding a research article by Agnieszka Jost and Durand R. Begault (“Observed effects of HRTF measurement signal level”, 2002”) where they took spatial measurements around a dummy head every 30 degrees in all directions. This article among other sources and research brought us to take the conclusion of taking impulse responses around the dummy head every 15 degrees (depth, width, and height), in a radius of 5 meters.
It seemed that the project was completed, but the hard work had barely begun. It took more than 3 months and thousands of impulse responses taken from all around the dummy head to obtain the spatial references (a lot of trial and error to come up with clean and clear signals). We implemented Easera acoustics software to make all the measurements and after a couple of months, we started the coding development process.
We developed a stand-alone version of the simulator (with rewiring mode for using it with any DAW), and we code the algorithms using MAX MSP, which by that time, was the most useful tool to convolve signals without generating a huge amount of latency. The result was a convincing software that would save you time and money when it comes to converting audio files into its binaural version, you can also design ambiance tracks or use it for surround and binaural mixing.
You can download the software for Windows and macOS by clicking the link below. The software includes a manual in Spanish and English. I also included the original paper (in Spanish) where the whole process of development of this software is exposed in detail, this description includes the measurement process, the theoretical background, and the programming/coding as well.