An RSS-feed Auditory Aggregator Using Earcons

In this work we present a data sonification framework based on parallel / concurrent sonic earcons ’ representations for monitoring in real-time information related to stock market. The information under consideration is conveyed through the well-known Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed Internet mechanism and includes both text and numeric values, converted to speech and earcons using existing speech synthesis techniques and sonic design guidelines. Due to the considered application characteristics, particular emphasis is provided on information representation concurrency, mainly achieved using sound source spatialization techniques and different timbre characteristics. Spatial positioning of sound sources is performed through typical binaural processing and reproduction. A number of systematic, subjective assessments performed have shown that the overall perceptual efficiency and sonic representation accuracy fulfills the overall application requirements, provided that the users are appropriately trained prior to using the proposed RSS-feed auditory aggregator. Categories and Subject Descriptors J.5 [Arts and Humanities]: Music – data sonification, earcons, sonic desig