The Importance and Creation of High-Quality Sounds in Healthcare Applications

In this chapter we look at Audio, a key aspect of virtual and augmented realities that, because of the dominance of the visual sense, is often overlooked in the creation of healthcare and other applications. Audio design and implementation is often under budgeted and considered at a late stage in many projects. This chapter seeks to raise awareness for the importance of high-quality audio in healthcare applications and describes the process of creating quality sound recordings. By way of an example, we describe research that uses nature sounds in conjunction with virtual environments for the purpose of managing stress, pain and other illnesses. We show how noise and distortions can have adverse effects on patient recovery and then describe how to avoid common mistakes in the recording of sounds. We discuss the equipment and workflow that is needed for the production of high-quality sound recordings for use in contemporary healthcare applications