Designing trend-monitoring sounds for helicopters: methodological issues and an application.

This article explores methodological issues in sonification and sound design arising from the design of helicopter monitoring sounds. Six monitoring sounds (each with 5 levels) were tested for similarity and meaning with 3 different techniques: hierarchical cluster analysis, linkage analysis, and multidimensional scaling. In Experiment 1, similarity ratings for the top and bottom levels of the sounds were obtained. In Experiments 2 and 3, the stimuli were rated along adjectives relevant to their application. The different sound groupings that resulted from the different clustering techniques are discussed, as is the potentially contradictory relationship between acoustic dimensions and adjectival descriptors. Generally, the results validate the design of the sounds and show that increases in stimulus value are more salient than are decreases.