Auditory Displays

Gender

Identity of sounds

is the technique for rendering sound from data

Direct rendering of data into audio samples.

Used in areas like seismology, EEG and Astronomy

Makes sense when data is oscillatory or cyclical

Data is generally conditioned in some way to adjust for human hearing

Can be useful as the auditory system can detect patterns and characteristics that are not evident in a visual representation of a signal

Easy to do in systems like Octave/Matlab/ipython

Playback environment is important

Auralization

Convey information through the systematic variation of simple sonic "atoms"

Examples

Types

Uses

Auditory events represent a single "concept" or "message"

mimic everyday non-speech sounds that we might be familiar with from our everyday experience of the real world, hence the meaning of the sounds seldom has to be learnt as they metaphorically draw upon our previous experiences

Must be designed when action or concept has no clear or easy association to real life

Earcons and auditory icons transmit discrete messages or events rather than continuous streams of data like audification

The main difference between Earcons and auditory icons is that auditory icons are literal or analogic representations

Like audification, but information from the data is used instead of the data values directly

The tricky part is the mapping between data features and audio parameters in a way that is meaningful

Often, the term sonification is used to denote this technique

Synthesis

Space can be an important parameter

the data are turned into dynamic models (or processes) rather than directly into sound.

the user excites these models in order to explore data structures via the acoustic feedback, thus putting interaction into a particular focus

Different to physical models in parameter mapping sonification in that the data determines the model with which the user interacts, as opposed to the data driving the sound creation

Feedback loop system