The complexity of music production tools can be a significant bottleneck in the creative process. Here we describe the development of a simple, intuitive audio equalizer with the idea that our approach could also be applied to other types of music production tools. First, users generate a large set of equalization curves representative of the most common types of modifications. Next, we represent the entire set of curves in 2-dimensional space and determine the spatial location of common auditory adjectives. Finally we create an interface, called 2DEQ, where the user can drag a single dot to control equalization in this adjective-labeled space. Author Keywords adaptive filters, music, user interfaces ACM Classification Keywords H.5.2 [User Interfaces]: Auditory (non-speech) feedback General Terms Algorithms, Experimentation, Human Factors.
Andrew T. Sabin, Bryan Pardo