Where's That Sound? Exploring Arbitrary User Classifications of Sounds for Audio Collection Management

Collections of sound and music of increasing size and diversity are used both by general personal computer users and multimedia designers. Browsing audio collections poses several challenges to the design of effective user interfaces. In this paper, we report results from a new version of the Sonic Browser for managing general sound resources on personal computers. In particular, we have evaluated browsing of everyday sounds. The investigation was directed at comparing browsing of audio resources with arbitrary classifications. The problem of sound resource browsing for multimedia designers is the specific area of focus for our experiment. Finally, we conclude with current trends of our approach for further improvement of the system.