From surround to true 3-D

To progress from surround sound to true 3-D requires an updating of the psychoacoustical theories which underlie current technologies. This paper shows how J.J.Gibson’s ecological approach to perception can be applied to audio perception and used to derive 3-D audio technologies based on intelligent pattern recognition and active hypothesis testing. These technologies are suggested as methods which can be used to generate audio environments that are believable and can be explored

3D audio as an information-environment: manipulating perceptual significance for differntiation and pre-selection

Contemporary use of sound as artificial information display is rudimentary, with little 'depth of significance' to facilitate users' selective attention. We believe that this is due to conceptual neglect of 'context' or perceptual background information. This paper describes a systematic approach to developing 3D audio information environments that utilise known cognitive characteristics, in order to promote rapidity and ease of use. The key concepts are perceptual space, perceptual significance, ambience labelling information and cartoonification

Concepts of perceptual significance for composition and reproduction of explorable sound fields

Recent work in audio and visual perception suggests that, over and above sensory acuities, exploration of an environment is a most powerful perceptual strategy. For some uses, the plausibility of artificial sound environments might be dramatically improved if exploratory perception is accommodated. The composition and reproduction of spatially explorable sound fields involves a different set of problems from the conventional surround sound paradigm, developed to display music and sound effects to an essentially passive audience. This paper is based upon contemporary models of perception and presents proposals for additional spatial characteristics beyond classical concepts of three-dimensional positioning of virtual objects

Causal contexts, cognitive cartoons and spatial sound

Based on previous work the proposal here is that spatial perception problems in artificial environments (e.g. spatial music displays) can be cast as a subset of the problems of cognitive mapping of the causal context that surrounds and supports the perceiver. The intuitively available distinctions in these contexts of foreground and background, previously couched in terms of perceptual significance exist as externally valid causal distinctions; the task of perception is to cognitively represent these distinctions sufficiently for appropriate interaction. Effectively, this means that some items will “naturally” occupy attention, whilst others should equally naturally appeal to background, inattentive processes. Hence, aspects of the causal context will be accorded differing cognitive resources according to their significance, and some may be very sparsely represented in cartoon form. That is, perception engages in sophisticated information reduction in cognitive representation in order to capitalise on available resources. This poster outlines how causal contexts (including spatial matters) can be physically cartoonified in reciprocal manner to the dedicated perceptual mechanisms’ operations, to economically and intuitively appeal to perception

3D audio as an information-environment: Manipulating perceptual significance for differentiation and pre-selection

Presented at the 7th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD), Espoo, Finland, July 29-August 1, 2001.Contemporary use of sound as artificial information display is rudimentary, with little 'depth of significance' to facilitate users' selective attention. We believe that this is due to conceptual neglect of 'context' or perceptual background information. This paper describes a systematic approach to developing 3D audio information environments that utilise known cognitive characteristics, in order to promote rapidity and ease of use. The key concepts are perceptual space, perceptual significance, ambience labelling information and cartoonification

A perceptual approach to the composition of meaning in artificial spatial audio

This paper describes research to inform the production of spatial audio that consolidates knowledge from several disparate fields. A perceptual model is proposed, based on contemporary perception theories, as the basis for new approaches to audio spatial understanding and a new approach to the generation of artificial sound fields. A fine-grain, modular model of perception is suggested that will allow audio attributes to have perceptual significance with respect to their causal trajectories. This represents an evolution towards the construction of believable sound fields from the traditional geometric, direction based approach to sound spatialisation.n/

Perceptual Cartoonification in Multi-Spatial Sound Systems

Presented at the 17th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD2011), 20-23 June, 2011 in Budapest, Hungary.This paper describes large scale implementations of spatial audio systems which focus on the presentation of simplified spatial cues that appeal to auditory spatial perception. It reports a series of successful implementations of nested and multiple spatial audio fields to provide listeners with opportunities to explore complex sound fields, to receives cues pertaining to source behaviors within complex audio environments. This included systems designed as public sculptures capable of presenting engaging sound fields for ambulant listeners. The paper also considers questions of sound field perception and reception in relation to audio object scaling according to the dimensions of a sound reproduction system and proposes that a series of multiple, coordinated sound fields may provide better solutions to large auditorial surround sound than traditional reproduction fields which surround the audience. Particular attention is paid to the experiences since 2008 with the multi-spatial The Morning Line sound system, which has been exhibited as a public sculpture in a number of European cities