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New to Auditory Displays?

Sonification Handbook

If you are looking to learn more about auditory displays, we highly recommend the Sonification Handbook (opens in new window).
The Sonification Handbook is an open access book edited by Thomas Hermann, Andy Hunt, and John G. Neuhoff that contains contributions from leading scientists in the auditory display community.

Summary of the handbook from the Sonification Handbook website:

This book is a comprehensive introductory presentation of the key research areas in the interdisciplinary fields of sonification and auditory display. Chapters are written by leading experts, providing a wide-range coverage of the central issues, and can be read from start to finish, or dipped into as required (like a smorgasbord menu).

Sonification conveys information by using non-speech sounds. To listen to data as sound and noise can be a surprising new experience with diverse applications ranging from novel interfaces for visually impaired people to data analysis problems in many scientific fields.

This book gives a solid introduction to the field of auditory display, the techniques for sonification, suitable technologies for developing sonification algorithms, and the most promising application areas. The book is accompanied by the online repository of sound examples.


Sonification Report (1997)

Another great starting resource is the 1997 Sonification Report: Status of the Field and Research Agenda (click here to open a new page where this paper can be downloaded). This report was prepared for the National Science Foundation and discusses the field of sonification, applications and implications of sonification applications, and proposes a research agenda.


ACM Transactions on Applied Perception (TAP) Vol. 2 Issue 4 (2005)

This special issue of ACM Transactions on Applied Perception (link opens a new page) commemorated the tenth International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD) and is as an introduction and overview of the field of auditory displays.