My colleagues, students, and I have developed a sound spatialization framework, including visual tools for soundscape manipulation, monitoring, and debugging. The tools enable spatial sound authoring for multimedia content. The system can be easily integrated into an virtual reality authoring system and its principles are widely applicable.
More visual tools could further enhance the spatial sound authoring process. We plan to develop a module for sound source tracing using trajectories and visualizing the convex hull to find out if a source covers a given area for the dynamic behavior. Also a module to visualize statistical data like average orientation, maximum velocity, average velocity, maximum intensity, average intensity, average audible range, etc., would complete the system. For testing and comparing sound spatialization systems, standard tests are required, as are already done for graphics systems.
The described editing facilities cover only directional sound as given by the VRML 2.0 specification. More sophisticated systems would handle sound reflectors, sound occluders [Tsingos-Gascuel97], and reverberation parameters of the space.