Auditory displays

artificial production of human speech

thumb|upright=1.4|Video of air pollution data from Beijing being conveyed as a piece of music Sonification is the use of non-speech audio to convey information or perceptualize data. Auditory perception has advantages in temporal, spatial, amplitude, and frequency resolution that open possibilities as an alternative or complement to visualization techniques.

thumb|250px|Detail view of the optophone The optophone is a device, used by people who are blind, that scans text and generates time-varying chords of tones to identify letters. It is one of the earliest known applications of sonification. Dr. Edmund Fournier d'Albe of Birmingham University invented the optophone in 1913, which used selenium photosensors to detect black print and convert it into an audible output which could be interpreted by a blind person. The Glasgow company, Barr and Stroud, participated in improving the resolution and usability of the instrument.

An earcon is a brief, distinctive sound that represents a specific event or conveys other information. Earcons are a common feature of computer operating systems and applications, ranging from a simple beep to indicate an error, to the customizable sound schemes of modern operating systems that indicate startup, shutdown, and other events.