The auditory sense is an intuitive and immersive channel to experi-
ence our surroundings, which motivates us to augment our percep-
tion of the real world with digital auditory content. We present a
wearable audio augmented reality prototype that tracks the user
with six degrees of freedom in a known environment, synthesizes
3D sounds, and plays spatialized audio from arbitrary objects to
the user. Our prototype is built using head-mounted visual-inertial
odometry, a sound simulation engine on a laptop, and off-the-shelf
headphones. We demonstrate an application in a gallery scenario
in which visitors can hear objects and scenes drawn in the paint-
ings, feeling audio-visually engaged in the depicted surroundings.
In a user study involving 26 participants, we observed that the
audio-enhanced exhibition improved people’s experience, as well
as helped them remember more lively details of the artworks.