Phonorama: mobile spatial navigation by directional stereophony

Abstract

Phonorama is a sonar-like mobile application that uses audio hotspots bound to specific geo-locations. Decreasing the distance to the audio source increases the volume. The addition of direction indicators enable rich and immediate, immersive audio-only spatial explorations: The direction of the audio hotspot source relative to the user's location is represented by a realtime stereo-panning (Directional Stereophony). If the audio source is left of the user, the volume on the left headphone speaker is louder than the volume on the right speaker. While the software has been created for audio guides in the context of media arts, it might be useful for all kinds of acoustic navigations, e.g. information hotspots in museums and public space, navigational aid, assistive technologies, social networking or localized advertisements.