A. The historic color-music problem or how one maps musical or other data into a visible display that evokes visually the acoustic and aesthetic aspects of music, is one that has been around for centuries. Many have attempted to resolve the problem. Previous solutions have always been those involving arbitrary assignments of a scale of numbered musical notes to a like scale of numbered color intervals.

B. The Harmonic Color Code System satisfies the "color-music" transform by constructing a color pattern of the entire frequency timbre envelope of a given tone, the frequency components (harmonics) present in a signal yielding a spectral array.

Humans are visual animals (with 1.5 million nerve fibers from each eye versus some 100,000 from each ear). The visual display exploits the human's large bandwidth visual system and permits the display of data with frequency components even beyond the limits of ordinary hearing to the eye as color and pattern.

This invention is intended for the teaching and analysis of music, structural hearing, for the mute, deaf, hearing impaired, autistic and others that can benefit from a sound-to-vision sensory substitution.

The HCCS has applications in many fields of data analysis, from music and acoustics to physics, mathematics or the analysis of cetacean sounds and communication interfaces, to name some applications of primary concern to us.

For simplicity, the terms signal, data, musical data, or a plethora of other possible signal sources (analog, digital, mathematically or synthetically generated etc.) that can be analyzed using the Harmonic Color Code System (hereafter - HCC - HCCS) will be referred to as "data".

This patent describes an innovative signal mapping system which permits the eye to see patterns present in any vibrational energy. It also describes devices which embody the mapping systems. The various devices that implement this mapping are here called the Harmonic Color Code Display Device or the Harmonic Color Code Display or simply "the display". This invention thus comprises both a mapping system and any devices that use it.

Means are described for other devices that, in conjunction with the proper data collection and the HCCS, permit the solution of the "cocktail party effect" i.e. the localization and identification of several simultaneous sound or data sources.

Other means are described here for devices that extend the concept to binaural hearing, recording and presentation of data to various media other than air, especially underwater. These relate specifically to the HHC when used as part of a communication interface for the analysis and developed translation of the patterns and meanings in the sounds of cetacea (dolphins and whales). The HCC is integral to this application because it permits visual appreciation of patterns in signals beyond the range of human hearing.