Auralization I: Vortex Sound Synthesis

Abstract

Auralization is the process of extracting and displaying meaningful information in the form of sound from data. Through not only visualization but also auralization, users may have better understandings of the data, especially when it is visually complicated. In this work, a field auralization technique is introduced, which objective is at the sound synthesis from field information represented as 3D time-varying volume data. Our technique takes a hybrid approach between parameter mapping and direct simulation. During preprocessing, acoustic strengths are computed at each vertex at each time step of volume data. During interaction, users navigate within the volume space and audio frames are computed by integrating the radiations from the sources. A number of problems inherent in this problem and our solutions are discussed.