Editing Sonification (section)

== Sonification techniques ==

Many different components can be altered to change the user's perception of the sound, and in turn, their perception of the underlying information being portrayed. Often, an increase or decrease in some level in this information is indicated by an increase or decrease in [[Pitch (music)|pitch]], [[amplitude]] or [[tempo]], but could also be indicated by varying other less commonly used components. For example, a stock market price could be portrayed by rising pitch as the stock price rose, and lowering pitch as it fell. To allow the user to determine that more than one stock was being portrayed, different timbres or brightnesses might be used for the different stocks, or they may be played to the user from different points in space, for example, through different sides of their headphones.

Many studies have been undertaken to try to find the best techniques for various types of information to be presented, and as yet, no conclusive set of techniques to be used has been formulated. As the area of sonification is still considered to be in its infancy, current studies are working towards determining the best set of sound components to vary in different situations.

Several different techniques for auditory rendering of data can be categorized:
* Acoustic sonification<ref>Barrass S. (2012) Digital Fabrication of Acoustic Sonifications, Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, September 2012. [http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=16375 online]</ref>
* [[Audification]]
* Model-based sonification
* Parameter mapping
* Stream-based sonification<ref>Barrass, S. and Best, G. (2008). Stream-based Sonification Diagrams. Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Auditory Display, IRCAM Paris, 24–27 June 2008. [http://dev.icad.org/Proceedings/2008/BarrassBest2008.pdf online]</ref><ref>Barrass S. (2009) [http://scan.net.au/scan/journal/display.php?journal_id=135 Developing the Practice and Theory of Stream-based Sonification]. ''[[Scan: Journal of Media Arts Culture]]'', [[Macquarie University]].</ref>

An alternative approach to traditional sonification is "sonification by replacement", for example Pulsed Melodic Affective Processing (PMAP).<ref>{{Cite journal|title=Pulsed Melodic Affective Processing: Musical structures for increasing transparency in emotional computation|journal=Simulation|volume=90|issue=5|page=606|date=2014-05-06|doi=10.1177/0037549714531060|last1=Kirke|first1=Alexis|last2=Miranda|first2=Eduardo|s2cid=15555997|hdl=10026.1/6621|hdl-access=free}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://cmr.soc.plymouth.ac.uk/pubs/IJUC_EM_04_Kirke_V3.pdf|title=Towards Harmonic Extensions of Pulsed Melodic Affective Processing – Further Musical Structures for Increasing Transparency in Emotional Computation|date=2014-11-11|access-date=2017-06-05}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.oldcitypublishing.com/journals/ijuc-home/ijuc-issue-contents/ijuc-volume-11-number-3-4-2015/ijuc-11-3-4-p-205-226/|title=A Hybrid Computer Case Study for Unconventional Virtual Computing|date=2015-06-01|access-date=2017-06-05}}</ref> In PMAP rather than sonifying a data stream, the computational protocol is musical data itself, for example MIDI. The data stream represents a non-musical state: in PMAP an affective state. Calculations can then be done directly on the musical data, and the results can be listened to with the minimum of translation.