Can acoustic design accommodate aural diversity?

Abstract

Up to now, the acoustic design of almost everything has assumed a typical listener with "normal" hearing. This includes the physical environment (homes, workplaces, public space), products that make sound (transport, appliances, loudspeakers), and systems for broadcast and reproduction (TV, radio, games). But at least one in five people in the world has atypical hearing. They are either narrowly medicalised (e.g., hearing aids) or mostly ignored (e.g., noise sensitivity). As the global population ages this proportion will increase. Aural diversity is a way of reconceptualising human experience of sound that emphasises the broad and semi-continuous distribution of differences that exist in detecting, processing and responding to sound. This paper explores whether acoustic design could adapt to incorporate the concept of aural diversity and what might be gained in doing so. The literature is reviewed to see how several different kinds of aural divergence are currently characterised and to identify some other auditory differences that are under-researched. A conceptual framework is proposed in which a single "normal" hearing model could be replaced with a hearing distribution or a multi-dimensional space of aural experience.