ABSTRACT
This book is concerned with hearing, and what we hear is sound. Thus, both intuition and reason make it clear that a basic understanding of the nature of sound is prerequisite to an understanding of audition. The study of sound is acoustics. An understanding of acoustics, in turn, rests upon knowing several fundamental physical principles. This is so because acoustics is, after all, the physics of sound. We will therefore begin by reviewing a number of physical principles so that the following chapters can proceed without the constant need for the distracting insertions of basic definitions and concepts. The material in this chapter is intended to be a review of principles that were previously learned. Therefore, the review will be rapid and somewhat cursory, and the reader may wish to consult the American National Standard addressing acoustical terminology and a physics or acoustics textbook for a broader coverage of these topics (e.g., Pearce and David, 1958; van Bergeijk et al., 1960; Peterson and Gross, 1972; Beranek, 1986; Everest, 2000; Kinsler et al., 1999; Speaks, 1960; Rossing et al., 2002; Hewitt, 2005; Young and Freedman, 2007),1 as well as the American National Standard addressing acoustical terminology (ANSI, 2004).
