NavigaTone: Seamlessly Embedding Navigation Cues in Mobile Music Listening

As humans, we have the natural capability of localizing the origin of sounds. Spatial audio rendering leverages this skill by applying special filters to recorded audio to create the impression that a sound emanates from a certain position in the physical space. A main application for spatial audio on mobile devices is to provide non-visual navigation cues. Current systems require users to either listen to artificial beacon sounds, or the entire audio source (e.g., a song) is repositioned in space, which impacts the listening experience. We present NavigaTone, a system that takes advantage of multi-track recordings and provides directional cues by moving a single track in the auditory space. While minimizing the impact of the navigation component on the listening experience, a user study showed that participants could localize sources as good as with stereo panning while the listening experience was rated to be closer to common music listening.