Hi All,

Two new demonstration WAV sound samples are meant to illustrate
the experimental seeing-with-sound technology, which automatically
translates images into corresponding "soundscapes". Just download
and listen to two small audio samples from the direct URLs below
at

   http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Peter_Meijer/voiscopebw.wav
   http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Peter_Meijer/voiscopebw2.wav

File sizes are only 22K and 44K, respectively. The second sound
sample is a slow-motion version of the first sound sample. Put your
WAV player to autorepeat to hear the one and two second samples
over and over for mental analysis. Can you hear the single period of
the sine wave curve going up, down, and then up again? Can you hear
the bright squares as little noise bursts at various positions within
the sound image? There are ten of these little squares. Pitch always
indicates vertical position, and stereo panning from left to right
indicates horizontal position of any visual items. Loudness matches
brightness. If you are interested in this experimental seeing-with-sound
technology, you can read more about it and obtain free evaluation 
software from the following web page URL:

   The vOICe Learning Edition
   http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Peter_Meijer/winvoice.htm

Have fun, and you are welcome to report any of your findings!

Best wishes,

Peter Meijer


Seeing with Sound - The vOICe
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Peter_Meijer/


P.S. A more detailed description of the above soundscapes follows below:

There is a dark grey tiled background, 10 squares wide and 8 squares high.
The tiles are separated by thin black lines. Upon the soft noise background
of the dark tiles, there is one period of a sine wave, a bright curve that
goes up, down and then up again. You will hear the sweeping tone for this
curve. In addition, 10 of the 80 background tiles have been given a lighter
shade of grey, almost white in fact. You can hear out these ten tiles at
various positions. There are five squares in a row positioned near the top
right, giving a high-pitched rhythm with very brief interruptions for the
thin black lines separating these squares. Right beneath the middle square
of this row of squares there is another single square, just above the lower
excursion of the sine wave, and there is also a square at the lower right
corner, giving a brief low-pitched noise burst at the far right. Finally,
there are three squares near the lower left of the image: two in a row and
a third one positioned one tile up immediately to the right of these two
neighbouring squares.

Now you will probably find that you have no major problems hearing all the
details, but you may also find that your brain often tricks you into hearing
one or a few items while suppressing some other items. For instance, with
the one-second soundscape in particular it may easily happen that you hear
all of the lower-pitched squares and the sine wave without noticing the five
squares at the upper right, while when you next think of the high-pitched
sound that you ought to hear at the upper right, you suddenly very clearly
hear that sound component again but in shifting your attention you may loose
track of perceiving some of the other items. The fact that you can hear all
components by shifting your attention around illustrates that it is a brain
thing, and not something having to do with your ears. Apparently it is not
quite easy for the brain to put all audible pieces together into a single
mental view. That's what we probably need practice for.

In case you want to import the image for a more detailed investigation,
using audio zoom (function key F4 and arrow keys), you can obtain the GIF 
image file from which the soundscapes were created at the direct download
URL

   http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Peter_Meijer/voiscopebw.gif

and import it into The vOICe Learning Edition software via the file
requester by pressing Control O. Note that the default contrast enhancement
(function key F6) had been turned off when creating the soundscapes for
this artificial image. Sighted readers can use the image to compare the
image directly to the soundscapes to verify the close correspondence.


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