ABSTRACT
Psychoacoustics is the study of how humans perceive sound. To begin our exploration of psychoacoustics it is first necessary to become familiar with the basic anatomy of the human hearing system to facilitate understanding of:
• the effect the normal hearing system has on sounds entering the ear,
• the origin of fundamental psychoacoustic findings relevant to the perception of music,
• how listening to very loud sounds can cause hearing damage, and
• some of the listening problems faced by the hearing impaired.
This chapter introduces the main anatomical structures of the human hearing system which form the path along which incoming music signals travel up to the point where the signal is carried by nerve fibres from the ear(s) to the brain. It also introduces the concept of ‘critical bands’ which is the single most important psychoacoustic principle for an understanding of the perception of music and other sounds in terms of pitch, loudness and timbre.
It should be noted that many of the psychoacoustic effects have been observed experimentally, mainly as a result of playing sounds that are carefully controlled in terms of their acoustic nature to panels of listeners from whom responses are monitored. These responses are often the result of comparing two sounds and indicating, for example, which is louder or higher in pitch or
