The Niche Hypothesis: Implications for Auditory Display Design

Abstract

Bernie Krause has hypothesized that “each creature appears to have its own sonic niche (channel, or space) in the frequency spectrum and/or time slot occupied by no other at that particular moment.” (Krause, 1987). The implication of this hypothesis is that good sound design should produce sounds that have unique spectral properties for a particular context. The semantics of the context also needs to be considered. However, this principal is difficult to satisfy because inexpensive sound generating devices have very limited (and primitive) audio capability.

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