Can Feeling Music Make It More Engaging? What a 2024 Study Found

Yes—feeling vibration that matches the music may make listening feel more engaging.

In a 2024 study, 41 listeners heard popular-music excerpts through headphones while a chair delivered vibration through the armrests, back and seat. When the vibration matched the music, listeners reported more groove, more arousal and a stronger feeling of being part of the music than they did with headphones alone.

That caught my attention for an obvious reason.

I spent years designing sound for live spaces, where music is never only an event at the ears. You feel it in the room, through the floor and against the body. SoundBlanket grew from the question of whether that missing physical dimension could be brought into a personal listening experience.

What did the researchers test?

Researchers at Graz University of Technology and the University of Oldenburg recruited 41 young adults with self-reported normal hearing.

Participants listened to unfamiliar excerpts from popular music through headphones while seated in a chair fitted with vibration across four contact areas: the left and right armrests, the backrest and the seat.

They compared four conditions:

• Headphones with no added vibration

• Vibration made from one combined version of the music

• Different musical tracks routed to different parts of the chair

• Vibration derived from a different song

After each excerpt, listeners rated the experience across six areas, including groove, arousal, liking, the feeling of a live performance and the feeling of being part of the music.

What changed when listeners could feel the music?

The clearest change was what the researchers called musical engagement.

That combined three ratings: groove, arousal and the feeling of being part of the music.

Both forms of matching vibration—the combined signal and the multi-surface version—produced substantially higher engagement ratings than headphones alone. Preference also increased, although that effect was smaller.

There was an interesting wrinkle in the mismatched condition. Vibration from a different song still increased engagement compared with headphones alone, but it reduced preference.

In other words, an experience can feel more involving without becoming more enjoyable.

Did more complex vibration work better?

Not in this experiment.

Routing different musical tracks to different parts of the chair did not significantly outperform the simpler combined vibration signal.

More complexity did not automatically create a better experience. The simpler and more elaborate matching conditions produced similar ratings.

That is a useful result because it shifts the question away from how elaborate a haptic system appears and toward how coherently it works with the music.

Why did the match matter?

In this experiment, matching vibration was derived from the same music participants heard. The incongruent condition used vibration from a different song.

The matching conditions produced the highest engagement and preference scores. Vibration from a different song also raised engagement above headphones alone, but it lowered preference.

The study did not isolate timing, intensity or frequency one variable at a time, so it cannot tell us which part of the match mattered most.

The useful design lesson is narrower: if the goal is an experience people prefer, the vibration should be connected to the music—not chosen independently from it.

Was SoundBlanket tested in this study?

No.

The researchers used a custom chair, headphones, unfamiliar music excerpts and a controlled experimental setup. SoundBlanket was not part of the study, and these results should not be treated as proof of a SoundBlanket outcome.

The connection is conceptual: both experiences pair music with body-contact vibration.

SoundBlanket uses 18 haptic transducers arranged in a 6-by-3 layout across the blanket. The study used four contact areas in a custom chair. Different hardware, different setup, related question.

What are the limits of the study?

This was a study of listening experience, not a clinical trial. It did not test sleep, pain, anxiety, recovery or any medical condition.

The participants were young adults, the group was relatively small and the outcomes were self-reported ratings collected during short laboratory sessions.

The researchers also used one fixed vibration level and naturalistic music excerpts. That made the experience more realistic, but gave them less control over the exact vibration delivered from one excerpt to another.

Future work could test broader age groups, adjustable intensity, familiar music, longer listening sessions and real-world settings.

What I took away

The finding that stayed with me was not that vibration made everything “better.”

It was more specific: vibration derived from the same music increased engagement and preference. Vibration from a different song still changed the experience, but it reduced preference.

That distinction gets close to what I have been pursuing with SoundBlanket.

The goal is not to shake the listener or exaggerate the low end. It is to let another part of the music arrive through the body—timed to the same beat, shaped by the same dynamics and connected to what the ears are already hearing.

The study does not answer every question. It gives one useful direction: for these listeners, sound and touch worked best when they belonged to the same music.

— Lance
Founder, SoundBlanket

Frequently asked questions

Does vibration make music more engaging?

In this 2024 study, matching vibration increased a musical-engagement rating composed of groove, arousal and feeling part of the music. This does not establish that every listener, song or haptic system will produce the same result.

What happened when the vibration did not match?

Vibration derived from a different song still raised engagement relative to headphones alone, but it lowered preference. Participants felt more involved without liking the experience more.

Is feeling music the same as hearing louder bass?

No. Loudness is an auditory perception. Vibrotactile listening adds mechanical vibration that the body can feel. The two can occur together, but they are not the same thing.

Did the more complex vibration system perform better?

Not in this study. Routing separate musical tracks to different chair surfaces did not significantly outperform a simpler combined vibration signal.

Was SoundBlanket used in the research?

No. The researchers used a custom vibrotactile chair and headphones. SoundBlanket was not tested.

Source

Siedenburg, K., Bürgel, M., Özgür, E., Scheicht, C. and Töpken, S. “Vibrotactile enhancement of musical engagement.” Scientific Reports 14, 7764 (2024). Full study · PubMed record