People turn their heads when listening and speaking, which produces several effects: On the one hand, listeners continuously perceive sound differently with head rotation as the ear sound reception changes. Put another way: We intuitively turn to better understand talkers by subconsciously ensuring that the critical frequency ranges for speech intelligibility arrive at our eardrums with higher signal energy and are not attenuated by the outer ear and our head.

The sound impression at the listener's ear also varies with a speaker's head movement. When a speaker turns their head, the oral sound field, i.e., the sound radiation coming from the mouth, changes significantly, especially in the area of the high-frequency sound components. Therefore, one turns just as intuitively toward the recipients for whom one wants to be as intelligible as possible as a talker.

In virtual and augmented reality, developers try to make the virtual world simulation more realistic by leaving the sound field in its natural position when the head is turned instead of letting it follow the rotation. This raises the question: Does the acoustic simulation still match the optical simulation during a head rotation?