Auditory messages in home, office, and medical environments consist of little more than beeps, bells, and buzzers. Warning signals are particularly inappropriate for these environments because they startle, annoy, but do not inform listeners as to the source of the difficulty. As home automation becomes prevalent, unpleasant sounds will not be tolerated. Earcons are musical sounds that are easy to learn; yet designed to inform listeners of the status of automated systems. We discuss problems such as simultaneous sounds and levels of urgency below.
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