Title:
Can auditory display help us categorize seismic signals?
Can auditory display help us categorize seismic signals?
Author(s)
Boschi, Lapo
Paté, Arthur
Holtzman, Ben
Le Carrou, Jean-Loïc
Paté, Arthur
Holtzman, Ben
Le Carrou, Jean-Loïc
Advisor(s)
Editor(s)
Collections
Supplementary to
Permanent Link
Abstract
Recordings of the Earth’s surface oscillation (seismograms) can be
sonified such that most of the signal’s frequency spectrum falls in
the audible range. Then, the pattern-recognition capabilities of the
human auditory system can be applied to auditory analysis of seismic
data. We sonify seismograms associated with a magnitude 5.6
earthquake. A group of volunteers listen to our sonified data set via
headphones and software allowing them to reproduce each signal
as many times as they want by clicking on the corresponding icon.
Following the “free categorization” approach, listeners are asked
to group icons corresponding to sounds perceived as “similar.” The
goal of this test is to determine whether the human auditory system
can perceive relevant “clues” in sonified seismograms, and
whether humans can group such stimuli accordingly. Our results
suggest that this is indeed the case, and allow us to identify at least
one categorization strategy followed by the majority of listeners,
which suggests that auditory analysis of seismic data is feasible
and possibly useful. Our findings encourage further work, where
we plan to take advantage of recent progress in auditory scene synthesis
algorithms and spatial audio technology.
Sponsor
Date Issued
2015-07
Extent
Resource Type
Text
Resource Subtype
Proceedings
Rights Statement
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License..