Sound Scope Headphones
Masatoshi Hamanaka∗
Univirsity of Tsukuba

1Introduction

We designed the Sound Scope Headphones so that they would let
users control an audio mixer through natural movements, and thus
enable a musical novice to separately listen to each player’s performance. The main advantage of the headphones is that they detectnatural movement, such as head movement or placing a hand behind an ear, and uses the detected movements to control an audio
mixer while the user listens to music. Three sensors are mounted
on the headphones: a digital compass, a tilt sensor, and a distancesensor (Figure 1).
Previously reported headphones with sensors to detect the direction
the user is facing or the location of the head can escalate the musicalpresence and create a realistic impression, but do not control thevolumes and panpots of each part according to the user’s wishes[Warusfel and Eckel ; Wu et al. ; Goudeseune and Kaczmarski ].
With these headphones, it is difficult to clearly hear a particular partfrom among many other parts, including some that the user would
prefer not to hear.
In contrast, our headphones let a user listening to music scope aparticular part that he or she wants to hear. For example, when listening to jazz, one might want to clearly hear the guitar or reduce
the sound of the sax. By moving your head left or right, you canhear from a frontal position. By looking up or down, you can betterhear the parts allocated to a more distant or a closer position. By
simply putting your hand behind your ear, you can adjust the distance sensor on the headphones and focus on a particular part you
want to hear (http://music.iit.tsukuba.ac.jp/hamanaka/SSH.mpg).
Distance sensor

SuengHee Lee†
Univirsity of Tsukuba
by moving his head up or down and the tilt sensor will detect thechange in the face’s angle of elevation. By looking up or down, respectively, the user increases the volume of each part located farther
away or more closely.
Link from the distance between hand and ear. The distance sensor detects the motion of putting a hand behind one’s ear while listening to the sound from a frontal position. The distance between
hand and ear determines the area indicating whether each part isaudible. For example, when a user places her hand close to herear, she can hear only the parts from a frontal position. When theuser removes her hand, she can hear all the parts except those behind her. When the user puts her hand in a middle position, she canhear the parts located in the front half position. Therefore, the user
can focus on a part she wants to listen to by adjusting the distance
between her hand and ear.

3 Conclusion
The Sound Scope Headphones enable the wearer to control an audio mixer through natural movements. We are now developing applications for the headphones. For example, Figure 2 shows real
instruments where the light brightness is controlled depending oneach part’s sound-level. This allows the user to understand eachpart’s sound-level visually as well as aurally. This should help musical novices who do not know the sound of each instrument learn
the relationship between instrument and sound.

Digital compass

Tils sensor

Figure 1: Three sensors mounted to headphones.

2How parts are scoped

The usability of our headphones depends on the quality of the links
between the mixer manipulations and the natural movement while
the user listens to music. We use three links.
Link from the facing direction. When a user moves his head leftwards (rightwards), the part normally heard from the left (right)
side can be heard from a frontal position as the digital compass detects the change in the direction the user faces. This allows a user,
through natural movement, to scope the part which he wants to hear
most clearly and hear it from a frontal position.
Link from the face’s angle of elevation. When there are severalparts in the frontal position, the user might not be able to hear thedesired part clearly after turning his head left or right to hear itfrom a frontal position. In such a case, the user can change the mix∗ e-mail:hamanaka@iit.tsukuba.ac.jp† e-mail:lee@kansei.tsukuba.ac.jp

Figure 2: Lighting depending on each part’s sound-level.

References
G OUDESEUNE , C., AND K ACZMARSKI , H. Composing outdoor
augmented-reality sound environments. In In Proceedings of theInternational Computer Music Conference.
WARUSFEL , O., AND E CKEL , G. Listen - augmenting eeveryday
environments through interactive soundscapes. In In Proceedings of IEEE Workshop on VR for public consumption.
W U , J., D UH , C., O UHYOUNG , M., AND W U , J. Head motion
and latency compensation on localization of 3d sound in virtual
reality. In In Proceedings of the ACM symposium on Virtual
reality software and technology.