Purpose:

• To give the student knowledge of the anatomy, physiology and psychology of hearing.

• To give the student knowledge of the planning of psychoacoustic experiments.

• To give background knowledge for design and construction of sound reproduction

systems.

Contents:

Module 1 – Physiology and Psychometry

Anatomy and physiology: Anatomy of the human ear. Temporal integration and time

constant of the ear. Audiology, audiometry, tympanometry and otoacoustic emissions.

Hearing disorders, diagnosis and treatment.

Psychophysics and psychometrics: Absolute threshold and just-noticeable difference,

balancing and scaling measurements, psychometric function, Weber’s rule and

Stevens’ power function. Hearing threshold and equal loudness contours, auditory

adaptation and fatigue.

Design of psychoacoustic experiments: Adjustment method, method of limits and

method of constant stimuli, adaptive methods,

forced choice methods, information of test subjects, statistics, randomising.

Module 2 – Psychoacoustic Phenomena

Critical bands and masking: Psychophysical tuning curves, post-masking and premasking,

pulsation threshold.

Pitch of pure tones and its dependence on intensity and tone duration, octave

matching, pitch of complex tones and virtual pitch, repetition pitch. Beats and

combination tones. Subjective deviation.

Spatial hearing: Sound localisation (direction and distance), head-related transfer

functions (HRTF’s), binaural models, precedence effect, phantom sources, Haas

effect, cocktail party effect, minimum audible angle, influence of reflections.

Prerequisites:

Time- and frequency analysis, statistics.

Duration:

2 modules

Category:

Study programme course (SE- course)