Auditory Scene Analysis: The Perceptual Organization of Sound

by Albert S. Bregman

Auditory Scene Analysis addresses the problem of hearing complex auditory environments, using a series of creative analogies to describe the process required of the human auditory system as it analyzes mixtures of sounds to recover descriptions of individual sounds. In a unified and comprehensive way, Bregman establishes a theoretical framework that integrates his findings with an unusually wide range of previous research in psychoacoustics, speech perception, music theory and composition, and computer modeling.

Genres: Music, Science

790 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Albert S. Bregman was a Canadian academic and researcher primarily in the perceptual organization of sound.

Reviews

[Bill Hsu]

There was a time in my life when I felt I really needed to read all of this classic. What I read was fascinating, but I think I've been in a different place for awhile.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This books contains really everything you need to know about auditory scene analysis. Principles of gestalt psychology, primitive grouping, stream integration and segregation are treated, together with examples from the visual and auditory domain (printings in the book and sound examples on the contained audio-cd). Many relations between auditory scene analysis and music composition/performance practice are discussed as well as some approaches towards schema-driven grouping principles. Unfortunately, the book is written like a novel (e.g. it contains rhetoric questions). The structure of the book is not straight-forward. Some aspects are repeated over and over again, others are hard to find in the long and unstructured text. To find out what units and streams, or the primitive grouping principles are, how to differentiate between simultaneous and sequential grouping, etc. you have to read the whole book because there are no helpful diagrams, lists, tables, or well-structured chapters with helpful headings.

[Jeffrey Boucher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very solid, overlong, but the in-book recommendation to read just the first and last chapters if you don't want that is solid enough. Kind of like a small book with a massive appendix that way. All solid ideas.