Comparison of spatial and temporal interaction techniques for 3D audio trajectory authoring

With the popularity of immersive media, developing usable tools for content development is important for the production process. In the context of 3D audio production, user interfaces for authoring and editing 3D audio trajectories enable content developers, composers, practitioners, and recording and mixing engineers to define how audio sources travel in time. However, common interaction techniques in 3D audio production tools can make the workflow of this task tedious and difficult to accomplish. This study investigates this problem by classifying the atomic tasks (spatially and temporally) of a general composite task of authoring 3D audio trajectories and then evaluating different interaction techniques across these tasks. Common graphical user interfaces were compared with input devices having varying degrees-of-freedom for spatial atomic tasks in order to investigate the effect of direct manipulation and integrality of interaction techniques. Continuous and discrete interaction techniques were compared for temporal tasks in order to investigate the effect of direct manipulation. Results suggest that interaction techniques with high degrees of integrality and direct manipulation reduce task completion time compared to standard GUI techniques. The design of temporal tasks can create a visual bias, and discrete-time controls can be a suitable method for traversing a small number of control points. These results and further observations provide directions on the study of interaction technique design for 3D audio tools, which in turn should improve workflows of 3D audio content creation.