Hasso-Plattner-Institut
Neurodesign
 

While it is a common approach to inspect data visually (by looking at graphs or tables), the inspection of data through sound is a less-known possibility. However, sonification can bring a lot of benefit for the understanding of data, as this example of brain data sonification shows.  

For researchers inexperienced in these approaches, the exploration of data through sound can be difficult, due to a lack of tools. Noel Danz has created a web environment where researchers can explore any of their own data by listening to it. Users can transform their data into audio via an easy-to-operate graphical interface.

The Sonification Playground supports a variety of typical measures in data sonification:

  • time dilation (listening faster/slower than the data was recorded)
  • peak detection within the generated signals (to find elements of interest)
  • different means of shaping the sound (FM / AM)
  • spatialization via either panning or binaural playback (HRTF based approach)
  • synchronous visualization of the data (because sometimes you want to see and hear)
  • div. mathematical operations on the data / audio signals

The tool is openly available at hv10.github.io/sonification-playground. Users are invited to give feedback, or to actively contribute in the tool development on GitHub - Sonification Playgorund.

For questions contact Noel