Psychoacoustics
Curriculum guideline
Lecture: 3 Hours/week
and
Lab: 1 Hour/week
Students engage in a variety of learning activites including lecture, critical listening activities, research and lab assignments which explore auditory illusion and the practical application of psychoacoustics principles in mixing and creating audio assets.
Sensory, perceptual, and cognitive realms of the auditory experience are explored though studies on pitch processing, loudness, timbre, timing and spatial location, stream segregation and fusion. Lab work focuses on the practical application of psychoacoustic principles in mixing and sound design.
1. The physics of sound
- Simple harmonic motion
- Wave parameters
- The harmonic series
- Simple and complex waveforms
- Fourier analysis
2. Architectural systems
- Modal response
- Reflection
- Absorption
- Reverberation
3. Musical instrument systems
- Vibrating strings
- Air columns
- Membranes
- Resonators
4. The Human Hearing System
- Physiology of the ear and hearing mechanism
- The auditory brain
- The musical brain
- Physical vs psycho-physical
- Noise-induced hearing damage and loss
5. Pitch Perception
- Different ranges of the frequency spectrum and pitch perception
- Virtual pitch
- Tonal topicity, critical bands, masking and roughness
- Tuning systems
- Consonance and dissonance
- Creating auditory illusions: pitch circularity
6. Hearing in Time and Space
- Interaural level, phase and time differences
- Binaural hearing and spatial localization
- Head-related transfer function
- Perceptual fusion
- Perspective
- Analyzing audio plugins: stereo wideners, binaural processing
7. Auditory Scene Analysis
- Perception
- Cognition
- Gestalt theories
- The Cocktail Party effect
- Perspective
- Stream segregation
8. Loudness and Masking
- Logarithmic hearing
- Listening fatigue
- The loudness wars
- Why louder sounds 'better' and the importance of gain staging
9. Temporal Processing
- Temporal masking and voice leading
- Adaptation, enhancement and musical arrangement
- Auditory memory
- Pulse extraction
10. Timbre
- Spectral power
- Temporal envelope
- Timbral cues
- Spectrograms
11. The Human Voice
- Vocal mechanisms
- Speech
- Language vs musical models
12. Psychoacoustics and audio quality
- Evaluating psychoacoustic claims and tools
- Psychoacoustic principles in music creation
- Psychoacoustic principles in mixing
Upon successful completion of the course, students will be able to:
- Trace the signal path from an acoustic sound source to an auditory experience;
- Differentiate physical from psycho-physical phenomena;
- Describe the auditory nervous system;
- Distinguish sensory, perceptual and cognitive processes;
- Relate psychoacoustic theories of pitch perception, timbre, loudness and sonic space to the creation and mixing of audio assets;
- Explain the way that the human auditory system organizes sound into meaningful elements (stream segregation);
- Identify and mitigate causes and consequences of noise-induced hearing loss;
- Identify and distinguish acoustic and psychoacoustic features of audio signals;
- Critically assess audio mixing strategies and tools from a psychoacoustic perspective.
Assessment will be based on course objectives and will be carried out in accordance with the Douglas College Evaluation Policy.
An example evaluation scheme is included below.
|
Assignment 1: Presentation |
20% |
|
Assignment 2: Audio Project |
20% |
|
Assignment 3: Research |
20% |
|
Quizzes and Tests |
10% |
|
Lab Assignments |
10% |
|
Mid-term Exam |
10% |
|
Final Exam |
10% |
|
TOTAL |
100% |
Textbooks and materials are to be purchased by students. A list of required and textbooks and materials is provided for students at the beginning of the semester. Example texts may include:
Music, Cognition and Computerized Sound: An Introduction to Psychoacoustics ed. Perry Cooke Published MIT Press
Psychology of Music: From Sound to Significance by Siu-Lan Tan, Peter Pfordresher and Rom Harré Routledge