Augmenting Human Hearing Through Interactive Auditory Mediated Reality

Abstract

To filter and shut out an increasingly loud environment, many resort to the use of personal audio technology. They drown out unwanted sounds, by wearing headphones. This uniform interaction with all surrounding sounds can have a negative impact on social relations and situational awareness. Leveraging mediation through smarter headphones, users gain more agency over their sense of hearing: For instance by being able to selectively alter the volume and other features of specific sounds, without losing the ability to add media. In this work, we propose the vision of interactive auditory mediated reality (AMR). To understand users' attitude and requirements, we conducted a week-long event sampling study (n = 12), where users recorded and rated sources (n = 225) which they would like to mute, amplify or turn down. The results indicate that besides muting, a distinct, "quiet-but-audible" volume exists. It caters to two requirements at the same time: aesthetics/comfort and information acquisition.