Auditory Scene Analysis

2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claude Alain ◽  
Lori J. Bernstein
Keyword(s):  
Music Perception ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Auditory Scene Analysis ◽  
Therapeutic Interventions ◽  
Scene Analysis ◽  
Societal Implications ◽  
Steady Increase ◽  
Auditory Neuroscience ◽  
Auditory Scene ◽  
History Of

Albert Bregman’s (1990) book Auditory Scene Analysis: The Perceptual Organization of Sound has had a tremendous impact on research in auditory neuroscience. Here, we outline some of the accomplishments. This review is not meant to be exhaustive, but rather aims to highlight milestones in the brief history of auditory neuroscience. The steady increase in neuroscience research following the book’s pivotal publication has advanced knowledge about how the brain forms representations of auditory objects. This research has far-reaching societal implications on health and quality of life. For instance, it helped us understand why some people experience difficulties understanding speech in noise, which in turn has led to development of therapeutic interventions. Importantly, the book acts as a catalyst, providing scientists with a common conceptual framework for research in such diverse fields as speech perception, music perception, neurophysiology and computational neuroscience. This interdisciplinary approach to research in audition is one of this book’s legacies.

scholarly journals Tracking Musical Voices in Bach's The Art of the Fugue: Timbral Heterogeneity Differentially Affects Younger Normal-Hearing Listeners and Older Hearing-Aid Users

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Siedenburg ◽  
Kirsten Goldmann ◽  
Steven van de Par
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Aids ◽  
Music Perception ◽  
Hearing Aid ◽  
Auditory Scene Analysis ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Scene Analysis ◽  
Superior Performance ◽  
Auditory Scene ◽  
Two Factors

Auditory scene analysis is an elementary aspect of music perception, yet only little research has scrutinized auditory scene analysis under realistic musical conditions with diverse samples of listeners. This study probed the ability of younger normal-hearing listeners and older hearing-aid users in tracking individual musical voices or lines in JS Bach's The Art of the Fugue. Five-second excerpts with homogeneous or heterogenous instrumentation of 2–4 musical voices were presented from spatially separated loudspeakers and preceded by a short cue for signaling the target voice. Listeners tracked the cued voice and detected whether an amplitude modulation was imposed on the cued voice or a distractor voice. Results indicated superior performance of young normal-hearing listeners compared to older hearing-aid users. Performance was generally better in conditions with fewer voices. For young normal-hearing listeners, there was interaction between the number of voices and the instrumentation: performance degraded less drastically with an increase in the number of voices for timbrally heterogeneous mixtures compared to homogeneous mixtures. Older hearing-aid users generally showed smaller effects of the number of voices and instrumentation, but no interaction between the two factors. Moreover, tracking performance of older hearing aid users did not differ when these participants did or did not wear hearing aids. These results shed light on the role of timbral differentiation in musical scene analysis and suggest reduced musical scene analysis abilities of older hearing-impaired listeners in a realistic musical scenario.

Attention effects on auditory scene analysis: insights from event-related brain potentials

2014 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mona Isabel Spielmann ◽  
Erich Schröger ◽  
Sonja A. Kotz ◽  
Alexandra Bendixen
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Scene Analysis ◽  
Scene Analysis ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Auditory Scene

Perceptual Processes in Orchestration

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meghan Goodchild ◽  
Stephen McAdams
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Scene Analysis ◽  
Scene Analysis ◽  
Auditory Grouping ◽  
Musical Scores ◽  
Auditory Scene ◽  
Music Research

The study of timbre and orchestration in music research is underdeveloped, with few theories to explain instrumental combinations and orchestral shaping. This chapter will outline connections between the orchestration practices of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and perceptual principles based on recent research in auditory scene analysis and timbre perception. Analyses of orchestration treatises and musical scores reveal an implicit understanding of auditory grouping principles by which many orchestral effects and techniques function. We will explore how concurrent grouping cues result in blended combinations of instruments, how sequential grouping into segregated melodies or stratified (foreground and background) layers is influenced by timbral similarities and dissimilarities, and how segmental grouping cues create formal boundaries and expressive gestural shaping through changes in instrumental textures. This exploration will be framed within an examination of historical and contemporary discussion of orchestral effects and techniques.

scholarly journals Intelligibility Redux

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Zayaruznaya
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
School Culture ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Auditory Scene Analysis ◽  
Scene Analysis ◽  
Multiple Texts ◽  
Human Ability ◽  
Auditory Scene ◽  
Choir School

The medieval composers of polytextual motets have been charged with rendering multiple texts inaudible by superimposing them. While the limited contemporary evidence provided by Jacobus’s comments in theSpeculum musicaeseems at first sight to suggest that medieval listeners would have had trouble understanding texts declaimed simultaneously, closer scrutiny reveals the opposite: that intelligibility was desirable, and linked to modes of performance. This article explores the ways in which 20th-century performance aesthetics and recording technologies have shaped current ideas about the polytextual motet. Recent studies in cognitive psychology suggest that human ability to perform auditory scene analysis—to focus on a given sound in a complicated auditory environment—is enhanced by directional listening and relatively dry acoustics. But the modern listener often encounters motets on recordings with heavy mixing and reverb. Furthermore, combinations of contrasting vocal timbres, which can help differentiate simultaneously sung texts, are precluded by a blended, uniform sound born jointly of English choir-school culture and modernist preferences propagated under the banner of authenticity. Scholarly accounts of motets that focus on sound over sense are often influenced, directly or indirectly, by such mediated listening.

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