Review of aspects of auditory signal studies in Japan

Presented at the 8th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD), Kyoto, Japan, July 2-5, 2002.Sound is very important in human communication. It evokes an attention and conveys much information even if a listener does not pay attention to the signal. These are very big advantages for information transmission. Information transmission that uses sound in addition to a speech have similar characteristics. Therefore, a lot of auditory auditory signal sounds other than language, such as alarms and warning signals are used frequently. Social conditions surrounding auditory signals and recent researchs are reviewed here

Multimodal bivariate thematic maps with auditory and haptic display

Presented at the 8th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD), Kyoto, Japan, July 2-5, 2002.The purpose of this study is to explore the possibility of multimodal bivariate thematic maps by utilizing auditory and haptic displays. With four different modes of display, the completion time of tasks and the recall (retention) rate were measured in two separate experiments. In terms of the completion time, haptic displays seem to interfere with other modalities. However, Color-Auditory displays performed similarly to Color-Color displays. For the recall rate, multimodal displays have higher recall rates, with users performing the best on Auditory-Haptic displays. These findings confirmed the possibility of using auditory and haptic displays in visually dominant geographic information systems (GIS). We speculate that the natural quantitative hierarchies in auditory and haptic displays provide an advantage in the use of multiodal displays

Educational testing of an auditory display regarding seasonal variation of martian polar ice caps

Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD), Boston, MA, July 7-9, 2003.During Fall 2002, planetary scientists and astronomy education researchers from the University of Arizona and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory collaborated with composer Marty Quinn of Design Rhythmics Sonification Research Lab in New Hampshire to create both a visual and auditory display of recent gamma ray data from Mars. This product will be used both to highlight the value of data from the current Mars 2001 Odyssey mission and to serve as a testbed for research into the use and effectiveness of auditory displays in science education. This paper provides background on the Mars data presented, an overview of the animation/sonification product, preliminary results from educational testing of the product, and future research plans. The authors hope to present both the sonification and preliminary results of educational research at the ICAD conference this summer

Ocean buoy spectral data sonification: Research update

Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD), Boston, MA, July 7-9, 2003.Since first presenting this work at the 2002 International Conference on Auditory Display the author has professionally produced a multimedia CD that explores the sonification of ocean wave data. ``Music from the Ocean'' is a multimedia CD that explores the sonification of ocean wave data for oceanography, science pedagogy, and music and sound synthesis. Turning this data into sound provides new ways of experiencing and comprehending the phenomena involved; the processes come alive and are more comprehensible, memorable and exciting than graphs of the data. This CD contains over 55 minutes of sound examples as well as an interactive Flash presentation and research paper explaining the methods in more detail. The accompanying 16-page booklet features graphics and information about the data, phenomena, and music. The CD appeals to a wide variety of consumers, from oceanographers, science teachers, experimental computer music enthusiasts, and music therapists

Subjective evaluation of auditory spatial imagery associated with decorrelated subwoofer signals

Presented at the 8th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD), Kyoto, Japan, July 2-5, 2002.Although only a single subwoofer is typically used in two-channel and multichannel stereophonic sound reproduction, the use of two subwoofers enables manipulation of low-frequency interaural crosscorrelation (IACC), and this manipulation is particularly effective in producing variation in auditory spatial imagery. In order to document this variation objectively, a series of listening experiments were executed using a set of stimuli generated at five correlation values and presented in two reproduction modes. Both modes used two subwoofers, but in one of the reproduction modes identical signals were applied to the two subwoofers. The results of both exploratory and confirmatory listening experiments showed that the range of variation in both perceived auditory source width (ASW) and perceived auditory source distance (ASD) is reduced when negatively correlated signals are not reproduced at low frequencies. Global dissimilarity judgments were made for this set of ten stimuli in an exploratory study designed to reveal the salient perceptual dimensions of the stimuli. A subsequent confirmatory study employed a two-alternative forced-choice task in order to determine how identifiably different the stimuli were with respect to the two perceptual attributes revealed in the exploratory study, those two attributes being ASW and ASD. The implications of these findings for loudspeaker-based spatial auditory display are discussed

For those who died: A 9/11 tribute

Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD), Boston, MA, July 7-9, 2003.For Those Who Died is a 6-minute dance and music tribute to those who died on 9/11. It premiered 9/11/2002 as part of a larger event entitled ``Reflections, A Gift to the Community'' that occurred at the Music Hall in Portsmouth NH. It features extensive textual sonification, dance, and two layers of visual presentation of nine textual datasets containing the names of those who died on September 11, 2001, the US Constitution and some DNA from chromosomes 1 and 9. The music was produced using five Yamaha QY70 and QY100 synthesizers and presented in surround sound

Sonically-enhanced widgets: comments on Brewster and Clarke, ICAD 1997

This paper presents a review of the research surrounding the paper “The Design and Evaluation of a Sonically Enhanced Tool Palette” by Brewster and Clarke from ICAD 1997. A historical perspective is given followed by a discussion of how this work has fed into current developments in the area

Investigating Perceptual Congruence Between Data and Display Dimensions in Sonification

The relationships between sounds and their perceived meaning and connotations are complex, making auditory perception an important factor to consider when designing sonification systems. Listeners often have a mental model of how a data variable should sound during sonification and this model is not considered in most data:sound mappings. This can lead to mappings that are difficult to use and can cause confusion. To investigate this issue, we conducted a magnitude estimation experiment to map how roughness, noise and pitch relate to the perceived magnitude of stress, error and danger. These parameters were chosen due to previous findings which suggest perceptual congruency between these auditory sensations and conceptual variables. Results from this experiment show that polarity and scaling preference are dependent on the data:sound mapping. This work provides polarity and scaling values that may be directly utilised by sonification designers to improve auditory displays in areas such as accessible and mobile computing, process-monitoring and biofeedback

DOLPHIN: the design and initial evaluation of multimodal focus and context

In this paper we describe a new focus and context visualisation technique called multimodal focus and context. This technique uses a hybrid visual and spatialised audio display space to overcome the limited visual displays of mobile devices. We demonstrate this technique by applying it to maps of theme parks. We present the results of an experiment comparing multimodal focus and context to a purely visual display technique. The results showed that neither system was significantly better than the other. We believe that this is due to issues involving the perception of multiple structured audio sources