International Community for Auditory Display

This paper proposes a design for a generalized sonification environment (``SonEnvir'') that aims to be flexible, easily extensible, and practically useful for researchers from many scientific domains (target fields) that deal with data analysis and exploration. SonEnvir is intended to allow for very quick development of new sonification designs, based on a library of existing sound processes that have multiple perceptually independent control parameters. By using modular software architecture which decouples components like basic data handling objects, data processing, sound synthesis processes, mappings used, playing approaches, and real-time interaction possibilities, all the individual aspects of one sonification design can easily be reused as starting points for new designs. Prototypes for this sonification environment are being developed on the SuperCollider3 (SC3) and PureData (pd) platforms