This disclosure provides for an auditory modification apparatus to facilitate extraction of information from an auditory observation stream. The approach may be used to reveal features about the environment, or to simplify processing of the incoming audio stream. The apparatus acts on the incoming auditory stream by nature of its shape, and that shape either is passively static or actively manipulated. Preferably, the apparatus has given shape characteristics to reveal features of the environment, such as directionality of a noise, size of an enclosed space, or materials of its construction, that are not otherwise detectable or easy to process with conventional approaches. Further advantage exists in the notion of actively manipulating the shape of the apparatus in conjunction with its operation to facilitate information extraction in a dynamic manner.