A Detailed Investigation into the Effectiveness of Earcons

Abstract

A detailed experimental evaluation of earcons was carried out to see whether they are an effective means of communicating information in sound. An initial experiment showed that earcons were better than unstructured bursts of sound and that musical timbres were more effective than simple tones. Musicians were shown to be no better than non-musicians when using musical timbres. A second experiment was then carried out which improved upon some of the weaknesses of the pitches and rhythms used in Experiment 1 to give a significant improvement in recognition. From the results some guidelines were drawn up for designers to use when creating earcons. These experiments have formally shown that earcons are an effective method for communicating complex information in sound.