Auditory events describe the subjective perception, when listening to a certain sound situation. This term was introduced by Jens Blauert (Ruhr-University Bochum) in 1966, in order to distinguish clearly between the physical sound field and the auditory perception of the sound. Blauert, J.: Spatial hearing - the psychophysics of human sound localization; MIT Press; Cambridge, Massachusetts (1983), chapter 1 Auditory events are the central objects of psychoacoustical investigations. Focus of these investigations is the relationship between the characteristics of a physical sound field and the corresponding perception of listeners. From this relationship conclusions can be drawn about the processing methods of the human auditory system. Aspects of auditory event investigations can be: *is there an auditory event?
Is a certain sound noticeable?
=> Determination of perception thresholds like hearing threshold,

auditory masking In audio signal processing, auditory masking occurs when the perception of one sound is affected by the presence of another sound.Gelfand, S.A. (2004) ''Hearing – An Introduction to Psychological and Physiological Acoustics'' 4th Ed. New York, ...

thresholds etc. *Which characteristics has the auditory event?
=> Determination of

loudness In acoustics, loudness is the subjective perception of sound pressure. More formally, it is defined as, "That attribute of auditory sensation in terms of which sounds can be ordered on a scale extending from quiet to loud". The relation of ph ...

, pitch,

sound In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' b ...

harshness Harshness (also called raucousness), in music information retrieval, is a Non-Contextual Low-Level Audio Descriptors (NLDs) that represents one dimension of the multi-dimensional psychoacoustic feature called as musical timbre. Classical timbre’ ...

etc. *How is the spatial impression of the auditory event?
=> Determination of

sound localization Sound localization is a listener's ability to identify the location or origin of a detected sound in direction and distance. The sound localization mechanisms of the mammalian auditory system have been extensively studied. The auditory system us ...

, lateralization, perceived direction etc. *When can differences in auditory events be noticed?
How big are the discrimination possibilities of the auditory system?
=> Determination of

just noticeable difference In the branch of experimental psychology focused on sense, sensation, and perception, which is called psychophysics, a just-noticeable difference or JND is the amount something must be changed in order for a difference to be noticeable, detectable ...

Relationships between sound field and auditory events

The sound field is described by

physical quantities A physical quantity is a physical property of a material or system that can be quantified by measurement. A physical quantity can be expressed as a ''value'', which is the algebraic multiplication of a ' Numerical value ' and a ' Unit '. For exam ...

, while auditory events are described by quantities of psychoacoustical perception. Below you can find a list with physical sound field quantities and the related psychoacoustical quantities of corresponding auditory events. Mostly there is no simple or proportional relationship between sound field characteristics and auditory events. For example, the auditory event property

depends not only on the physical quantity sound pressure but also on the spectral characteristics of the sound and on the sound history.

References

{{reflist, 2 Acoustics Hearing