Psychoacoustics Research News: Advancing the Understanding of Human Auditory Experience

The field of psychoacoustics is dedicated to advancing our knowledge of the mechanism of human auditory experience and providing perceptually-motivated solutions to audio engineering problems.

Anatomy of the human ear.

University of Huddersfield's Applied Psychoacoustics Lab (APL)

The Applied Psychoacoustics Lab (APL) at the UK’s University of Huddersfield is an experimental hub created to advance our knowledge of the mechanism of human auditory experience and provides perceptually-motivated solutions to audio engineering problems.

“Recently we’ve been focusing on virtual acoustics for extended reality applications,” explains Prof Hyunkook Lee, Founder/Director of the APL.

“We’re also conducting lots of experiments using VR headsets and also display systems to look into the interaction between audio cues and visual cues,” he continues.

“That’s highly relevant for creating immersive experiences. It’s not just audio that gives you an immersive audio experience - because we see things in real life.

For the last decade, 24 Genelec 8040 monitors combined with a pair of 7070 subwoofers have been used to reproduce audio in APL’s critical listening room.

“There were two reasons basically,” recalls Lee, discussing the decision for the upgrade.

“The Ones provide excellent tonal consistency wherever you sit in the room, which is very important when you have a lot of people in this space. When we hosted a recent AES International Conference on Spatial and Immersive Audio, we had 21 people in this room. And wherever they sat, they had an excellent experience.

“The second reason was for our research,” he continues.

“We needed coaxial monitors because when you do localisation tests, the acoustic centre position is always important. With the 8040s, you have to take the average between the tweeter and woofer. The new setup allows APL to create a Dolby Atmos 9.1.6 space, while the remaining 8040s ensure that this can be expanded to cover higher channel count formats such as NHK’s 22.2 standard.

A further advantage that APL has found from upgrading is the simplicity of room switching made possible with GLM software.

“We can tune the whole room with the 9.1.6 system in less than five minutes and that was a big factor,” says Lee.

“GLM makes a huge difference, especially with immersive audio. Of course, you get a very significant difference with stereo as well.

With the new system in place, APL is continuing its efforts to help improve our understanding of immersive audio environments.

“Recently, we’ve been focusing on binaural audio for virtual monitoring and extended reality applications,” explains Lee.

“And my current research focuses on what kind of roles audio plays in providing an immersive experience. And for that, it’s all about understanding what content producers really think about immersive audio, and what kind of experience users expect from these immersive systems. We need to understand each other and try to narrow the gap and work together in a collaborative environment.

MIT's Research on Auditory Perception

Auditory Perception and Cognitive Science

The human auditory system is a marvel of biology. So far, even the most sophisticated computational models cannot perform such tasks as well as the human auditory system, but MIT neuroscientist Josh McDermott hopes to change that.

“Our long-term goal is to build good predictive models of the auditory system,” McDermott says.

McDermott’s lab also explores how exposure to different types of music affects people’s music preferences and even how they perceive music.

One aspect of audition that McDermott’s lab focuses on is “auditory scene analysis,” which includes tasks such as inferring what events in the environment caused a particular sound, and determining where a particular sound came from.

This requires the ability to disentangle sounds produced by different events or objects, and the ability to tease out the effects of the environment.

“Sounds in the world have very particular properties, due to physics and the way that the world works,” McDermott says.

“We believe that the brain internalizes those regularities, and you have models in your head of the way that sound is generated.

“Hearing impairment is the most common sensory disorder. It affects almost everybody as they get older, and the treatments are OK, but they’re not great,” he says.

“We’re eventually going to all have personalized hearing aids that we walk around with, and we just need to develop the right algorithms in order to tell them what to do.

About 10 years ago, when McDermott was a postdoc, he started working on cross-cultural studies of how the human brain perceives music.

These studies have revealed both differences and similarities between Westerners and the Tsimane’ people.

McDermott has found that Westerners and the Tsimane’ differ in their perceptions of dissonance. He has also shown that that people in Western society perceive sounds that are separated by an octave to be similar, but the Tsimane’ do not.

However, there are also some similarities between the two groups.

“We’re finding both striking variation in some perceptual traits that many people presumed were common across cultures and listeners, and striking similarities in others,” McDermott says.

Research Areas in Psychoacoustics

Psychoacoustics research encompasses a wide range of topics, including:

Auditory scene analysis and sound object recognition: Research investigating how listeners distinguish between sound sources, process complex acoustic environments, and identify sound objects within natural and artificial soundscapes.
Hearing loss, auditory perception, and assistive technologies: Studies examining how hearing loss alters psychoacoustic and cognitive aspects of sound perception, including changes in pitch, loudness, temporal and spatial processing.

This collection aims to bridge theory with application by highlighting work that spans from the core science of psychoacoustics to innovative implementations in real-world audio systems and soundscapes.

We also welcome contributions that do not restrict to natural sciences, but that work in close relationship with, or make use of methods borrowed from the humanities and social sciences, e.g.

Recent Publications in Psychoacoustics

Here's a list of recent publications in the field of psychoacoustics:

Best, V., Ahlstrom, J. B., Mason, C. R., Perrachione, T. K., Kidd, G., Jr., & Dubno, J. R. (2024). Talker change detection by listeners varying in age and hearing loss.
Best, V., & Roverud E. (2024). Externalization of speech when listening with hearing aids.
Miles, K., Best, V., & Buchholz, J. M. (2024). Feasibility of an adaptive version of the everyday conversational sentences in noise test.
Andrejková, G., Best, V., & Kopčo, N. (2023). Time scales of adaptation to context in horizontal sound localization.
Best, V., Boyd, A. D., & Sen, K. (2023). An effect of gaze direction in cocktail party listening.
Byrne, A. J., Conroy, C., & Kidd, G., Jr. (2023). Individual differences in speech-on-speech masking are correlated with cognitive and visual task performance.
Conroy, C., Buss, E., & Kidd, G., Jr. (2023). Cues to reduce modulation informational masking.
Kidd, G., Jr., & Conroy, C. (2023). Auditory informational masking.
Roverud, E., Villard, S., & Kidd, G., Jr. (2023). Strength of target source segregation cues affects the outcome of speech-on-speech masking experiments.
Villard, S., Perrachione, T. K., Lim, S.-J., Alam, A., & Kidd, G., Jr. (2023). Energetic and informational masking place dissociable demands on listening effort: Evidence from simultaneous electroencephalography and pupillometry.
Baltzell, L. Best, V., Baltzell, L. S., & Colburn, H. S. (2022). Effects of hearing loss on interaural time difference sensitivity at low and high frequencies.
Byrne, A. J., Conroy, C., & Kidd, G., Jr. (2022). The effects of uncertainty in level on speech-on-speech masking.
Cho, A. Y., & Kidd, G., Jr. (2022). Auditory motion as a cue for source segregation and selection in a “cocktail party” listening environment.
Chou, K. F., Boyd, A. D., Best, V., Colburn, H. S., & Sen, K. (2022). A biologically oriented algorithm for spatial sound segregation.
Conroy, C., Byrne, A. J., & Kidd, G., Jr. (2022). Forward masking of spectrotemporal modulation detection.
Miles, K. M., Beechey, T., Best, V., & Buchholz, J. M. (2022). Measuring speech intelligibility and hearing-aid benefit using everyday conversational sentences in real-world environments.
Prud’homme, L., Lavandier, M., & Best, V. (2022). A dynamic binaural harmonic-cancellation model to predict speech intelligibility against a harmonic masker varying in intonation, temporal envelope, and location.
Prud’homme, L., Lavandier, M., & Best, V. (2022). Investigating the role of harmonic cancellation in speech-on-speech masking.
Baltzell, L. S., & Best, V. (2021). High-resolution temporal weighting of interaural time differences in speech.
Best V., Goupell M. J., & Colburn H. S. (2021). Binaural hearing and across-channel processing. In: Litovsky, R. Y., Goupell, M. J., Fay, R. R., & Popper, A. N. (Eds.) Binaural Hearing.
Conroy, C., & Kidd, G., Jr. (2021). Informational masking in the modulation domain.
Goupell, M. J., Best, V., & Colburn, H. Jett, B., Buss, E., Best, V., Oleson, J., & Calandruccio, L. (2021). Does sentence-level coarticulation affect speech recognition in noise or a speech masker?
Lavandier, M., Mason, C. R., Baltzell, L. S., & Best, V. (2021). Individual differences in speech intelligibility at a cocktail party: A modeling perspective.
Roverud, E., Dubno, J. R., Richards, V. M., & Kidd, G., Jr. (2021). Cross-frequency weights in normal and impaired hearing: Stimulus factors, stimulus dimensions, and associations with speech recognition.
Yun, D., Jennings, T. R., Kidd, G., Jr., & Goupell, M. J. (2021). Benefits of triple acoustic beamforming during speech-on-speech masking and sound localization for bilateral cochlear-implant users.
Baltzell, L. S., Cho, A. Y., Swaminathan, J., & Best, V. (2020). Spectro-temporal weighting of interaural time differences in speech.
Baltzell, L. S., Swaminathan, J., Cho, A. Y., Lavandier, M., & Best, V. (2020). Binaural sensitivity and release from speech-on-speech masking in listeners with and without hearing loss.
Best, V., Baumgartner, R., Lavandier, M., Majdak, P., & Kopčo, N. (2020). Sound externalization: A review of recent research.
Best, V., Conroy, C., & Kidd, G., Jr. (2020). Can background noise increase the informational masking in a speech mixture?
Conroy, C., Best, V., Jennings, T. Conroy, C., Mason, C. R., & Kidd, G., Jr. (2020). Informational masking of negative masking.
Kidd, G., Jr., Jennings, T. R., & Byrne, A. J. (2020). Enhancing the perceptual segregation and localization of sound sources with a triple beamformer.
Prud’homme, L., Lavandier, M., & Best, V. (2020). A harmonic-cancellation-based model to predict speech intelligibility against a harmonic masker.
Roverud, E., Bradlow, A., & Kidd, G., Jr. (2020). Roverud, E., Dubno, J. R., & Kidd, G., Jr. (2020). Hearing-impaired listeners show reduced attention to high-frequency information in the presence of low-frequency information.
Villard, S., & Kidd, G., Jr. (2020). Assessing the benefit of acoustic beamforming for listeners with aphasia using modified psychoacoustic methods.
Wang, L., Best, V., & Shinn-Cunningham, B. G. (2020). Benefits of beamforming with local spatial-cue preservation for speech localization and segregation.
Best, V., Roverud, E., Baltzell,L., Rennies, J., & Lavandier, M. (2019). The importance of a broad bandwidth for understanding “glimpsed” speech.
Best, V., & Swaminathan, J. (2019). Revisiting the detection of interaural time differences in listeners with hearing loss.
Kidd, G., Mason, C. R., Best, V., Roverud, E., Swaminathan, J., Jennings, T., Clayton, K., & Colburn, H. S. (2019). Determining the energetic and informational components of speech-on-speech masking in listeners with sensorineural hearing loss.
Rennies, J., Best, V.. Roverud, E., & Kidd, G. (2019). Energetic and informational components of speech-on-speech masking in binaural speech intelligibility and perceived listening effort.
Villard, S., & Kidd, G. (2019). Effects of acquired aphasia on the recognition of speech under energetic and informational masking conditions.
Best, V., Ahlstrom, J. B., Mason, C. R., Roverud, E., Perrachione, T. K., Kidd, G., Jr., & Dubno, J. R. (2018). Talker identification: Effects of masking, hearing loss, and age.
Best, V., Swaminathan, J., Kopčo, N., Roverud, E., & Shinn-Cunningham, B. G. (2018). A “buildup” of speech intelligibility in listeners with normal hearing and hearing loss.
Cubick, J., Buchholz, J. M., Best, V., Lavandier, M., & Dau, T. (2018). Listening through hearing aids affects spatial perception and speech intelligibility in normal-hearing listeners.
Dai, L., Best, V., & Shinn-Cunningham, B. G. (2018). Sensorineural hearing loss degrades behavioral and physiological measures of human spatial selective auditory attention.
Rennies, J., & Kidd, G. (2018). Benefit of binaural listening as revealed by speech intelligibility and listening effort.
Roverud, E., Best, V., Mason, C. R., Streeter, T., & Kidd, G., Jr. (2018). Evaluating the performance of a visually guided hearing aid using a dynamic auditory-visual word congruence task.
Best, V., Mason, C. R., Swaminathan, J., Roverud, E., & Kidd, G., Jr. (2017). Use of a glimpsing model to understand the performance of listeners with and without hearing loss in spatialized speech mixtures.
Best, V., Roverud, E., Mason, C. R., & Kidd, G., Jr. (2017). Examination of a hybrid beamformer that preserves auditory spatial cues.
Best, V., Roverud, E., Streeter, T., Mason, C. R., & Kidd, G., Jr. (2017). The benefit of a visually guided beamformer in a dynamic speech task.
Kidd, G., Jr. (2017). Enhancing auditory selective attention using a visually guided hearing aid.
Kidd, G., Jr., & Colburn, H. S. (2017). Informational masking in speech recognition. In: The Auditory System at the Cocktail Party. J. C. Middlebrooks, J. Z. Simon, A.N. Popper and R.R. Fay (Eds.). Springer Nature, pp.
Shinn-Cunningham, B., Best, V., & Lee, A. K. C. (2017). Auditory object formation and selection. In: The Auditory System at the Cocktail Party. J. C. Middlebrooks, J. Z. Simon, A. N. Popper and R. R. Fay (Eds.). Springer Nature, pp.
Best, V., Streeter, T., Roverud, E., Mason, C. R., & Kidd, G., Jr. (2016). A flexible question-and-answer task for measuring speech understanding.
Clayton, K., Swaminathan, J., Yazdanbakhsh, A., Zuk, J., Patel, A. D., & Kidd, G., Jr. (2016). Executive function, visual attention and the cocktail party problem in musicians and non-musicians.
Kidd, G., Jr., Mason, C. R., Best, V., Swaminathan, J., Roverud, E., & Clayton, K. (2016). Determining the energetic and informational components of speech-on-speech masking.
Roverud, E., Best, V., Mason, C., Swaminathan, J., & Kidd, G., Jr. (2016). Informational masking in normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners measured in a nonspeech pattern identification task.
Swaminathan, J., Mason, C. R., Streeter, T., Best, V., Roverud, E., & Kidd, G., Jr. (2016). Role of binaural temporal fine structure and envelope cues in cocktail-party listening.
Best, V., Mason, C. R., Kidd, G., Jr., Iyer, N., & Brungart, D. S. (2015). Better-ear glimpsing in hearing-impaired listeners.
Kidd, G., Jr., Mason, C. R., Best, V., & Swaminathan, J. (2015). Benefits of acoustic beamforming for solving the cocktail party problem.
Swaminathan, J., Mason, C. R., Streeter, T. M., Best, V., Kidd, G,. Jr., & Patel, A. D. (2015). Musical training, individual differences and the cocktail party problem.