Psychoacoustics is not the science of hearing.

[Neuro]

It is important to understand that Psychoacoustics and Audiology are only related sciences to the only science of hearing - Neurophysiology.​

Physics/acoustic is the only science that describes physical stimuli on the eardrum.
Audiology is the only science that describes the sensory response to physical stimuli.
The brain processes the input signals sent from the ear's sensors and creates different forms of hearing in the brain.
Neurophysiology is the only science that describes the process of hearing.
Neuropsychology is one of the sciences that describes the responses to hearing.

Unfortunately, it is rare in research studies to have this clear differentiation between these four sciences and their various unique characteristics. This has over the decades created unclear and unfortunate confusion about how we hear.

 

[ahofer]

One thing about your summary that I think needs clarification: Hearing involves a large number of afferent and efferent pathways as well as processing stages in the brain. So the brain actually sends signals back to the ear that affect hearing. I recommend this book for descriptions:

https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Mind-Brain-Constructs-Meaningful/dp/0262545071

Here's an interview with the author:

Understanding the Sound Mind: An Interview with Nina Kraus, PhD

Through her research she has continually uncovered new findings about auditory processing and the brain, as well as our lives in sound

hearingreview.com

 

[Neuro]

The brain is the hub where almost all afferent (ingoing) impulses from all body sensors are truncated on the fly into mainly automatic responses through efferent (outgoing) nerves most unconsciously and a few conscious responses.
The brain is the master that creates new response algorithms based on previous experiences and new stimuli in their context. Physical sound stimulates the ear which stimulates the brain. The brain notes every sound stimulus and usually chooses to do nothing. Certain sound stimuli trigger some algorithm and usually create an efferent unconscious response. In a few cases, a conscious response is created. We consciously hear a sound that we can describe in a psychological response.

 

[JSmith]

The brain is a "prediction machine"... everything we sense has already occurred and that assumes visual and auditory stimuli actually exists in the way we "perceive" it.

Our brain is a prediction machine that is always active

Our brain works a bit like the autocomplete function on your phone -- it is constantly trying to guess the next word when we are listening to a book, reading or conducting a conversation. Contrary to speech recognition computers, our brains are constantly making predictions at different levels...

www.sciencedaily.com

JSmith

 

[Neuro]

Correct. The direct sound is perceived once and often not correctly.
The McGurk effect is one example of when sound perception fails.
Based on context, lipreading, high-frequency reflexes, and experience, the neurophysiological processes in the brain normally guess correctly.

McGurk effect - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Neuro]

It is important to understand that Psychoacoustics and Audiology are only related sciences to the only science of hearing - Neurophysiology.​

Physics/acoustic is the only science that describes physical stimuli on the eardrum.
Audiology is the only science that describes the sensory response to physical stimuli.
The brain processes the input signals sent from the ear's sensors and creates different forms of hearing in the brain.
Neurophysiology is the only science that describes the process of hearing.
Neuropsychology is one of the sciences that describes the responses to hearing.

Unfortunately, it is rare in research studies to have this clear differentiation between these four sciences and their various unique characteristics. This has over the decades created unclear and unfortunate confusion about how we hear.

Correct understanding of hearing is much more complicated than psychoacoustics makes it seem.

The hearing of sounds is divided into three main areas. All three areas can be found at all major universities — physics, neurophysiology and neuropsychology.
Articles in "psychoacoustics" are mainly published by engineering faculties.
Psychoacoustic departments are very rare in the university world.
When the conclusions in psychoacoustic articles from the technical findings are related to how we hear, the most basic requirements in neuroperception are rarely met.
Reproduced double-blind studies such as Floyd Toole's subjective basis for spinorama measurements are scarce.
Are all the data available so that an exact reproduction is possible.? (If the money was there.)
ASR is strongly angled from the technical side with usually valid scientific and technical approaches with weak conclusions about how we hear.

I lack a broader analysis of several of these complicated issues. Scientifically correct technical findings also require correct correlations to sound perception.
Maybe there are other forums with knowledge in the area?

 

[EERecordist]

Thanks for contributing to ASR. Keep up your contributions. I am an engineer scientist who has studied sensory psychology.

There is the real world down to individual level we attempt to make models of. ASR measurements do not comprehend, or can they, the mass and individual audio cortex. I would propose there is no mass audio cortex model.

IMO the audio cortex is trained in age 0-1 on voices.

I don't think is is useful to argue between named academic disciplines who owns the question.

 

[ahofer]

Thanks for contributing to ASR. Keep up your contributions. I am an engineer scientist who has studied sensory psychology.

There is the real world down to individual level we attempt to make models of. ASR measurements do not comprehend, or can they, the mass and individual audio cortex. I would propose there is no mass audio cortex model.

IMO the audio cortex is trained in age 0-1 on voices.

I don't think is is useful to argue between named academic disciplines who owns the question.

Quite a signature block!!

 

[EERecordist]

Thanks. It is a little bit of the story of my audio life. I left out artists and recordists I have worked with. I studied audio in EE school. And I studied hearing. I continue contributions to deaf communication. My job was to sit, adjust, and advise on performance at the end of musician takes.

 

[Berwhale]

Thanks. It is a little bit of the story of my audio life. I left out artists and recordists I have worked with. I studied audio in EE school. And I studied hearing. I continue contributions to deaf communication. My job was to sit, adjust, and advise on performance at the end of musician takes.

Welcome to ASR! Your introduction would be best placed in the 'introduce yourself thread': https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...members-to-asr-introduce-yourself-here.20204/

Signatures of this length bother some members, especially those who have to scroll through them on small smartphone screens. I know that some member feel obliged to turn off signatures in their settings because of this, which I think is a bit of a shame...

 

[JustJones]

Welcome to ASR! Your introduction would be best placed in the 'introduce yourself thread': https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...members-to-asr-introduce-yourself-here.20204/

Signatures of this length bother some members, especially those who have to scroll through them on small smartphone screens. I know that some member feel obliged to turn off signatures in their settings because of this, which I think is a bit of a shame...

View attachment 353055

Thanks, never knew I could hide those. It does help with scrolling on small screen.

 

[JoetheLion]

Psychoacoustic departments are very rare in the university world.

We have a new institute here in Germany, the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics. It is concerned with the "underlying genetic, biological, and psychological processes that underlie the production and perception of art", especially in music. They recently published a very interesting article. The result in one sentence: "Beauty is in the Ear of the Listener."

Perceptual (but not acoustic) features predict singing voice preferences - Scientific Reports

Why do we prefer some singers to others? We investigated how much singing voice preferences can be traced back to objective features of the stimuli. To do so, we asked participants to rate short excerpts of singing performances in terms of how much they liked them as well as in terms of 10...

www.nature.com

 

[Neuro]

"Beauty is in the Ear (brain) of the Listener."

Interesting study. It is hardly a surprise that intraindividual differences affect judgments more than more objective variables when judging sounds.

There are significant similarities in how speakers are perceived. If the listener is used to a not even tone curve from a loudspeaker - a straight tone curve will not be appreciated. The brain adapts over a long time to a slightly non-straight tone curve as normal. Even if the listener understands that the straight-tone curve is correct, the hard-programmed crooked curve will be perceived as correct.
This reflects that we have difficulty emotionally changing hard-coded experiences even if we intellectually understand that they are wrong. Applies to all subjective assessments.
Our unique experiences almost autonomously guide our subjective reactions. It is not the case that we give exactly the same response to the same stimuli on different occasions. But because we react differently relative to other individuals and we react differently on different occasions, it is perceived that we are independent individuals with free will.
The synapse combinations are hard-coded, but which algorithm combinations are expressed at a certain time depends on many variables not mentioned here.
But there is no actual free will.

Simuli (the singer's' voice) = measurable fysics => brain algoritm = measurable neufroysiology => response = measurable neuropsychology

Hearing in the real sense only happens in the brain - neurophysiologically - as a reaction to the physical sound stimuli whereas a conscious response is experienced in the neuropsychological dimension.

 

[lashto]

... Physical sound stimulates the ear which stimulates the brain ...

That is just one path. The sound experience not ears-only but a whole-body experience.
E.g. for many people the chest-thump feeling is the best part of the bass experience. And the so called "inaudible" ultrasonics & subsonics will still vibrate some parts of your anatomy and are not exactly effect-less.

Does any of those sciences study the whole body aspect? Can you recommend some studies/books/etc?

 

[Neuro]

All the body's sound-sensitive sensors converge on the brain. The information from the sensors in the ear dominates. The contributions of other sound sensors are negligible during normal listening.
For example, thoracic resonances can be excited by sound levels above 100 dB at 40-60 Hz. Old-fashioned disco speakers with a steep high-pass filter at 40 Hz reportedly got more girls on the dance floor due to the positive experience of the chest resonances.
Frequencies below about 16 Hz are perceived as non-harmonious and often mask the firm and solid bass in slightly higher frequencies. The result is a deep diffuse base.

The total conscious sound experience is highly multidimensional where information is integrated into the brain from various sensors, The sound itself triggers neurons in the auditory centres in the temporal lobe, and the emotional experience takes place in another part of the brain. Speech understanding takes place in another part. Precedence effects take place in another part, etc.
The localization of a prominent sound occurs early in the brainstem and activates the eye muscles to scan the visual field to verify the acoustic localization. This happens automatically without the control of the will long before the sound is identified and possibly made conscious in higher brain centres.

The sound flow's real-time stimulation of multiple nerve cells in different functional areas in the brain is related in real time to past experiences and if the signal value is high enough, in a broad sense, the sound feed will become conscious.

Unfortunately, there is no book in the area that I know of. These are some fragmentary memories from thousands of studies in the area.

 

[pablolie]

....
For example, thoracic resonances can be excited by sound levels above 100 dB at 40-60 Hz. Old-fashioned disco speakers with a steep high-pass filter at 40 Hz reportedly got more girls on the dance floor due to the positive experience of the chest resonances.
...

That's got nothing to do with psychoacoustics though, just a sure way to destroy your hearing because you want to "feel" the stuff.

I find anything that shakes the room or gets into my body utterly undesirable. And I have protected my hearing my entire life. "Shaking the room" has little to do with the audiophile experience, in my humble opinion.

I'd also add the very definition of acoustic (i.e. sound) indicates that your ears are the only organ involved in it. If you "feel" bass any other way, it's air hitting you or vibrations in the environment, meaning it's not anything acoustic.

 

[Axo1989]

That's got nothing to do with psychoacoustics though, just a sure way to destroy your hearing because you want to "feel" the stuff.

I find anything that shakes the room or gets into my body utterly undesirable. And I have protected my hearing my entire life. "Shaking the room" has little to do with the audiophile experience, in my humble opinion.

I'd also add the very definition of acoustic (i.e. sound) indicates that your ears are the only organ involved in it. If you "feel" bass any other way, it's air hitting you or vibrations in the environment, meaning it's not anything acoustic.

We've discussed your aversion to bass in music before. No criticism of your personal taste of course. And protecting hearing is entirely sensible. But I think good earplugs are the best option for enjoying prolonged enjoyment of loud+tactile performances and venues. More pleasure than abstention from tactile sensation in my view.

In all seriousness I think constraining discussion of music to exclude tactile and subsonic sensation is misguided. The OP has described the brain integrating sensation to deliver the impression of hearing (or hearing plus feeling if you prefer). Our emotional and hedonic responses don't necessarily restrict themselves on the basis of frequency bandwidth. It's as if you are applying a conceptual straight-jacket to split the vibrations from say a bass drum into acceptable (acoustic) and unacceptable (tactile) categories. It's a drum, regardless of your categorical thinking. And people have enjoyed drumming from the very beginning of music.

 

[goliardo]

..........

I don't think is is useful to argue between named academic disciplines who owns the question.

+1

 

[bluefuzz]

If you "feel" bass any other way, it's air hitting you or vibrations in the environment, meaning it's not anything acoustic.

Tell that to Evelyn Glennie ... ;-)

 

[amirm]

When the conclusions in psychoacoustic articles from the technical findings are related to how we hear, the most basic requirements in neuroperception are rarely met.

Psychoacoustics primarily deals with the "what," not "how" or "why." Experiments are created and conducted to detect audibility of various thresholds. What is observed is then used to design systems such as lossy audio codecs. In that regard, it is not important to know why something is happening. The famous Fletcher-Munson graphs were created using this type of testing.

There is some extension of the field, diving into ear and how it perceives acoustic excitement. In that regard, it has a bit of overlap with neurology. And some guesses as to central cortex being involved (e.g. the cocktail party effect or stream analysis). But again, this is not deep analysis.

Put succinctly, psychoacoustics gives us the knowledge to develop audio systems. It is a field of science. But distinct from those in the medical or broader science professions.