  Even in the digital age, designers largely rely on physical material samples
to illustrate their products, as existing visual representations fail to
sufficiently reproduce the look and feel of real world materials. Here, we
investigate the use of interactive material sonification as an additional
sensory modality for communicating well-established material qualities like
softness, pleasantness or value. We developed a custom application for
touchscreen devices that receives tactile input and translate it into material
rubbing sound using granular synthesis. We used this system to perform a
psychophysical study, in which the ability of the user to rate subjective
material qualities is evaluated, with the actual material samples serving as
reference stimulus. Our experimental results indicate that the considered audio
cues do not significantly contribute to the perception of material qualities
but are able to increase the level of immersion when interacting with digital
samples.
