Empirically based auditory display design

This paper focuses on everyday sounds and in particular on sound description, sound understanding, sound synthesis/ modelling and on sonic interaction design. The argument made in this paper is that the quantitative-analytical reductionist approach reduces a phenomenon into isolated individual parts which do not reflect the richness of the whole, as also noted by Widmer et al. [1]. As with music, so is it for everyday sounds that multidimensional approaches and techniques from various domains are required to address the complex interplay of the various facets in these types of sounds. An empirically inspired framework for sonic interaction design is proposed that incorporates methods and tools from perceptual studies, from auditory display theories, and from machine learning theories. The motivation for creating this framework is to provide designers with accessible methods and tools, to help them bridge the semantic gap between low-level perceptual studies and high-level semantically meaningful concepts. The framework is designed to be open and extendable to other types of sound such as music.