Visualising the Soundfield and Soundscape: Extending Macaulay and Crerar's 1998 Method

The introduction of effective auditory warnings into a shared environment requires a prior understanding of the existing soundfield and soundscape. Reifying the physical and perceptual auditory environment enables a form of preauditioning, as well as the evaluation of any auditory augmentation. This paper describes the development of a visualisation technique for soundscape mapping. Building on earlier published work in sound classification, we report data captured using eighteen participants in a shared office environment. The resulting sound classification is used as the basis of a pictorial soundscape and soundfield visualisation. We show how this representation can be used to model the experiences of individuals, as well as subsets of users of the space.