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This thesis explores the characteristics, experiential qualities and functional attributes of audio augmented objects within the context of museums and the home. Within these contexts, audio augmented objects are realised by attaching binaurally rendered and spatially positioned virtual audio content to real-world objects, museum artefacts, physical locations, architectural features, fixtures and fittings. The potential of these audio augmented objects is explored through a combination of practice-based research and ethnographically framed studies. The practical research takes the form of four sound installation environments delivered through the use of an augmented reality mobile phone application that are deployed within a museum environment and in participants' homes. Within these experiences, audio augmented objects are capable of being perceived as the actual source of virtual audio content. The findings also demonstrate how the perceived characteristics of real-world objects and physical space can be altered and manipulated through their audio augmentation. In addition, audio augmented museum objects present themselves as providing effective interfaces to digital audio archival content, and digital audio archival content presents itself as an effective re-animator of silenced museum objects. How audio augmented objects can function as catalysts for the exploration of physical space and virtual audio space within both the home and museum is presented. This is achieved by the uncovering of a sequence of interactional phases along with the uncovering of the functional properties of different types of audio content and physical objects within audio augmented object realities. By way of conclusion, it is proposed that the audio augmented object reality alters the current, popular experience of acoustic virtual reality from an experience of you being there, to one of it being here. This change in the perception of the acoustic virtual reality has applications across an array of audio experiences, not just within cultural institutions, but also within various domestic listening experiences including the consumption and delivery of recorded music and audio-based drama.