ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a brief survey of some of the research relevant to auditory communications in a virtual environment and some of the display technology which makes it possible. Although humans can perceive other sounds, there is some evidence that they are adapted to perceive the sounds that they make. The human ear consists of three main parts. The first part is the outer ear: this comprises the pinna, or ear flap, and the external auditory meatus or ear canal, a tube some 25 mm long and 7 mm in diameter. The perception of tonal quality and the ability to categorize sounds is dependent on several characteristics. The case of musical instruments can be taken as an example. Lofqvist refers to speech as audible gestures, and as such speech is an important capacity of many virtual ‘actors’. One type of synthesizer models the speech process in terms of its acoustic properties.
