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Re: [Ayatana] Fwd: CHI Day 4 continued

These are all very relevant points for the sound brief Michael and I have been working on this week.
Below you can read an excerpt of what we have some up with so far:

The very nature of a proposed sound depends on its purpose. Essentially any "sound object" can be defined by its pitch, amplitude and its timbre. Therefore the would be sound designer needs to consider these three factors.
  • The pitch is entirely up to the creator.
  • The amplitude should be at a practical level leaving little room for creativity. 
  • The timbre defines the tone or colour of the sound. There are plenty of vague definitions of timbre so I won't attempt another but a very important aspect of timbre is the dynamic quality of the sound. From a macroscopic view we want to know how the sound behaves over time in terms of pitch and amplitude. And at a more microscopic level how does its harmonic structure changes over time (see the flat upper harmonics of a note from a saxophone). All these factors and others determine how easy it is for the sound to be localized.  In essence the timbre will determine what meaning a listener will read from a proposed sound event.
Considering the role of the sound event we would like the creator to utilize these aural characteristics to their full potential. For instance when designing a sound for an alert it should have a relevant envelope which automatically draws the attention of the user to the screen. If the sound is easier to localise then so is the device/laptop/net-book/monitor. Similarly if a sound's purpose is to convey a failure of some description it may have more melancholic characteristics and so on and so forth.    
 
>State type information that Charlene is referring to would be something
>novel like the musical pitch of the entire sound theme could being
>lowered by an octave as battery power drains to a critical level.
>Something easily done with a DFT audio processing routine.
This would be very nice indeed but are you implying we should schedule real-time signal processing of a sound event on a machine that is already dying because of lack of power :)
It is funny you mention this since we have been talking about the possibility using real-time processing on sound events using simple Gstreamer pipelines or Faust DSPs.

We came to a point during the week where we realized we needed more community feedback before we committed to a brief hence the urge to organise a session at UDS about sound themes.
More info on session to follow.


Conor

   

On 15/04/10 14:23, Jim Rorie wrote: 
On Thu, 2010-04-15 at 08:40 +0100, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
  
Authors discussed how artificial subtle expressions, simple and
low-cost 
expressions like beeping sounds or blinking LEDs, could convey the 
internal states of artifacts to users like non verbal information.  
    
Part of my particular push toward the sound themes.  I termed it
accessibility, but it applies to typical user as well.  Sounds are very
non intrusive form of notification(if done well) and ingrain deeply in
our psyche. Ask Pavlov's mutt.

New mail notifications signal events same as the device
connected/disconnected sounds that we all are very familiar with.
State type information that Charlene is referring to would be something
novel like the musical pitch of the entire sound theme could being
lowered by an octave as battery power drains to a critical level.
Something easily done with a DFT audio processing routine. 

An opposite increase in octave could signal another type of UP mode.  If
your were working with midi material, you might shift the audio to a
minor key to signal yet another perhaps negative state. (Minor keys have
a lot of dissonance, they sound sad when played) 

Intensity can be played with for notifications from important contacts
either through amplitude to speeding up the track.  A little stronger
for emails from mom.


  
In 
user testing, they found that people could read emotions in sounds
and 
could decode sound according to their pitch, duration and intensity. 
    
LOL.  I think Mozart figured that out a few centuries ago. :)



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-- 
Conor Curran
Desktop Architect Sound Engineer
Desktop Experience team
Canonical Ltd
Email: conor.curran@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
web: http://www.canonical.com