3D Audio Spatialization With 3D audio spatialization, several speech or audio streams can be simultaneously heard and localized. Digital filter algorithms coupled with specialized audio boards are required for artificially spatializing sound. An understanding of the individual audio artifacts, their context and their relationship to each other can only be gained within the framework of a common structure. Espace 2 is an artificial computing environment that uses acoustic representation for spatial and temporal navigation of hyper-audio content. The users are presented with a hierarchy of parent bubbles, each with an acoustic texture.
Users can navigate within bubbles to hear the existence of other sub-bubbles.
On selecting a sub-bubble, the related audio content is played out. No spatialized 3D audio was utilized in this early prototype, permitting only a 2-dimensional representation of acoustic bubbles. In Espace 2, content was delivered via audio CDs, and the user was provided interactive control over the playback of the audio content. It must be noted that the audio CDs presented conversations and discussions, not music, so as to simulate hyper-linked synthesized speech or digital audio content. During the playback of audio content, temporal audio cues indicate the presence of hyper-links to other audio nodes.