An Exploratory Evaluation of User Interfaces for 3D Audio Mixing

The paper presents an exploratory evaluation comparing different versions of a mid-air gesture based interface for mixing 3D audio exploring: (1) how such an interface generally compares to a more traditional physical interface, (2) methods for grabbing/releasing audio channels in mid-air and (3) representation of sources in separate 3D views vs. in one shared 3D view. Results suggest that while the traditional physical interface is generally intuitive and easy to use, the 3D gesture interface provides an improved understanding of the 3D space and provides a better control of especially moving sources. The shared view provides a better overview and workflow than the separated view and grabbing sounds using hand-gestures causes difficulties.