Harnessing the Power of Music & Sound Design in Interactive Media

The history of the development of sound on film offers us lessons for the development of sound and music for interactive artforms. Now that technological developments have enabled almost unrestricted importation of audio into interactive platforms, the time has come for us to ask: is the content of the audio good enough

Virtual Audio - Three-Dimensional Audio in Virtual Environments

Three-dimensional interactive audio has a variety ofpotential uses in human-machine interfaces. After lagging seriously behind the visual components, the importance of sound is now becoming increas-ingly accepted. This paper mainly discusses background and techniques to implement three-dimensional audio in computer interfaces. A case study of a system for three-dimensional audio, implemented by the author, is described in great detail. The audio system was moreover integrated with a virtual reality system and conclusions on user tests and use of the audio system is presented along with proposals for future work at the end of the paper. The thesis begins with a definition of three-dimensional audio and a survey on the human auditory system to give the reader the needed knowledge of what three-dimensional audio is and how human auditory perception works

iKlax: a New Musical Audio Format for Active Listening

In this paper, we are presenting a new model for interactive music. Unlike most interactive systems, our model is based on file organization, but does not require digital audio treatments. This model includes a definition of a constraints system and its solver. The products of this project are intended for the general public, inexperienced users, as well as professional musicians, and will be distributed commercially. We are here presenting three products of this project. The difficulty of this project is to design a technology and software products for interactive music which must be easy to use by the general public and by professional composers

Design and User Satisfaction of Interactive Maps for Visually Impaired People

Multimodal interactive maps are a solution for presenting spatial information to visually impaired people. In this paper, we present an interactive multimodal map prototype that is based on a tactile paper map, a multi-touch screen and audio output. We first describe the different steps for designing an interactive map: drawing and printing the tactile paper map, choice of multi-touch technology, interaction technologies and the software architecture. Then we describe the method used to assess user satisfaction. We provide data showing that an interactive map - although based on a unique, elementary, double tap interaction - has been met with a high level of user satisfaction. Interestingly, satisfaction is independent of a user's age, previous visual experience or Braille experience. This prototype will be used as a platform to design advanced interactions for spatial learning

Latency Performance for Real-Time Audio on BeagleBone Black

In this paper we present a set of tests aimed at evaluating the responsiveness of a BeagleBone Black board in real-time interactive audio applications. The default Angstrom Linux distribution was tested without modifying the underlying kernel. Latency measurements and audio quality were compared across the combination of different audio interfaces and audio synthesis models. Data analysis shows that the board is generally characterised by a remarkably high responsiveness; most of the tested configurations are affected by less than 7ms of latency and under-run activity proved to be contained using the correct optimisation techniques

Mobile Audiovisual Terminal: System Design and Subjective Testing in DECT and UMTS networks

It is anticipated that there will shortly be a requirement for multimedia terminals that operate via mobile communications systems. This paper presents a functional specification for such a terminal operating at 32 kb/s in a digital European cordless telecommunications (DECT) and universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) radio network. A terminal has been built, based on a PC with digital signal processor (DSP) boards for audio and video coding and decoding. Speech coding is by a phonetically driven code-excited linear prediction (CELP) speech coder and video coding by a block-oriented hybrid discrete cosine transform (DCT) coder. Separate channel coding is provided for the audio and video data. The paper describes the techniques used for audio and video coding, channel coding, and synchronization. Methods of subjective testing in a DECT network and in a UMTS network are also described. These consisted of subjective tests of first impressions of the mobile audio–visual terminal (MAVT) quality, interactive tests, and the completion of an exit questionnaire. The test results showed that the quality of the audio was sufficiently good for comprehension and the video was sufficiently good for following and repeating simple mechanical tasks. However, the quality of the MAVT was not good enough for general use where high-quality audio and video was needed, especially when transmission was in a noisy radio environment

Investigating the socio-constructivist dimension of online interactions: the case of synchronous audio-graphic conferencing systems

This study explores the quality of interactive patterns in audio-graphic conferencing environments and learners' involvement in interaction. Supporters of this technology claim that online interactions support socio-constructivist language learning. However, the existing literature does not indicate whether the quality of interaction required for realising constructivist principles of learning can affectively be ensured in such environments. The study is based on the Open University's online audio-graphic tuition environment, Lyceum. It investigates the verbal and written interactions of adult Open University students learning French. The data is analysed by different models of analysis pertaining to different socio-constructivist and cognitive models of analysis. The results show that students use high forms of thinking to engage in a cyclical rather than a linear process of knowledge construction. However, there is no evidence that this process is supported by the audio-graphic system itself. The tutor's style and task design play a more important role in supporting the learning process