Investigating spatial music qualia through tissue conduction

A spatial array of vibro-mechanical transducers for bone-and-tissue conduction has been used to convey spatial ambisonic soundscape and spatial musical material. One hundred volunteers have undergone a five-minute listening experiences, then have described the experience in their own words, on paper, in an unstructured elicitation exercise. The responses have been aggregated to elicit common emergent descriptive themes, which were then mapped against each other to identify to what extent the experience was valuable, enjoyable and informative, and what qualia were available through this technique. There appear to some substantive differences between this way of experiencing music and spatial sound, and other modes of listening. Notably, the haptic component of the experience appears potentially informative and enjoyable. We conclude that development of similar techniques may have implications for augmented perception, particularly in respect of quality of life (QoL) in cases of conductive hearing loss.n/