Psychoacoustics:
Psychoacoustics is the branch of psychophysics involving the scientific study of sound perception and audiology—how humans perceive various sounds. More specifically, it is the branch of science studying the psychological responses associated with sound (including noise, speech, and music). Psychoacoustics is an interdisciplinary field of many areas, including psychology, acoustics, electronic engineering, physics, biology, physiology, and computer science. [Wikipedia]
Noted in “The Search For The Perfect Sound,” Geoff Edgers, WaPo:
CDs were not a crime against sonic nature. Their success as a product did lead to major shifts, though. Suddenly, the technologists, not the music geeks, were in charge. They focused on psychoacoustics, a field that embraces the idea that our ears can mask deficiencies in a recording. What we hear isn’t merely what’s presented but how we interpret it.
I’ve known audioheads for decades, but never really paid attention. This is an interesting exploration of the subject from the inside.
