Focused Audification and the optimization of its parameters

We present a sonification method which we call Focused Audification (FA; previously: Augmented Audification) that allows to expand pure audification in a flexible way. It is based on a combination of single-side-band modulation and a pitch modulation of the original data stream. Based on two free parameters, the sonification’s frequency range is adjustable to the human hearing range and allows to interactively zoom into the data set at any scale. The parameters have been adjusted in a multimodal experiment on cardiac data by laypeople. Following from these results we suggest a procedure for parameter optimization to achieve an optimal listening range for any data set, adjusted to human speech.