With headphone technologies advancing at an evermore rapid pace, the commercial and investigative desire to evaluate their efficacy in preparation for broad adoption is quickly becoming a necessity. Despite this, very few, if any, published works have evaluated the impact that demographic information has on various externalization factors, including head-tracking, and this is compounded by the comparatively small population sizes of the studies that have been published, leading to significant findings with unknown applicability. Subjective listening tests were conducted among 23 subjects representing multiple demographic groups in terms of age, musical experience, and binaural experience, in order to evaluate the impact of head-tracking on binaural externalization and the influence that differing demographics may have. The findings of this study indicate that head-tracked head-movements may play a larger role in preventing binaural externalization collapse, rather than increasing or improving perceived binaural externalization, and that there is no statistically significant difference in perception of externalization of either speech or broadband noise between differing age groups, musical experience groups, or binaural experience groups, but that there is a statistically significant difference in perception of coloration between groups of differing musical experience.
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https://aes2.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23097
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