Why Read This Book

You should read this book if you build or evaluate audio and speech systems that must account for human hearing: it explains how the ear and auditory system transform sound and how those transformations justify perceptual algorithms (masking, loudness, critical bands). You will gain practical models and experimental facts that you can apply to perceptual coding, quality assessment, hearing-aid design, and objective measures of audio quality.

Who Will Benefit

Audio and speech engineers, codec developers, and researchers who need rigorous, usable models of human hearing to inform system design and evaluation.

Level: Intermediate — Prerequisites: Basic signal processing (Fourier analysis, filtering), elementary acoustics, and comfort with basic calculus; familiarity with audio engineering concepts is helpful.

Key Takeaways

• Explain the anatomy and basic physiology of the ear and how it shapes the signal available to higher-level perception.
• Apply critical-band, Bark-scale, and auditory-filter concepts to interpret spectral masking and resolution.
• Use loudness models and equal-loudness data to predict perceived level and to design perceptually weighted measurements.
• Predict and quantify simultaneous and temporal masking effects and apply them to perceptual coding/bit allocation.
• Describe binaural processing and localization cues relevant to spatial audio and beamforming evaluation.
• Relate psychoacoustic measurement methods and typical datasets to practical applications such as codec evaluation and hearing-aid tuning.

Topics Covered

1. Introduction and scope
2. Basic acoustics and the external/middle ear
3. The cochlea and auditory nerve: physiology relevant to perception
4. Pitch and frequency selectivity — critical bands and the Bark scale
5. Loudness: equal-loudness contours and loudness models
6. Masking: simultaneous and temporal masking phenomena
7. Auditory filters and models of peripheral processing
8. Temporal resolution, modulation detection, and temporal masking
9. Binaural hearing and localization cues
10. Speech perception and intelligibility considerations
11. Measurement methods, psychoacoustic experiments and standards
12. Applications: perceptual audio coding, hearing aids, and audio-visual interactions (new chapter in edition)

How It Compares

Covers similar ground to Brian C.J. Moore's The Psychology of Hearing but is more concise and application-oriented for engineers; complements Bregman's Auditory Scene Analysis which focuses more on higher-level cognitive grouping.