Psychoacoustic Secrets For Mixing - 23/12/22

US The principles behind how we hear sound

Audio University is back to explain the Psycho acoustic secrets for mixing music, giving you the opportunity to make better choices in your productions. His video references a number of slides by Bernhard Seeber, explaining how the tone, intensity and noise can affect how we hear certain sounds. This knowledge is useful to working out issues with your mixes, as well as offering some creative space to use these techniques for your audience's listening pleasure.

More videos from the Audio University: www.youtube.com/@AudioUniversity

 

So lowering the lows makes the highs more audible? I'm close to be almost nearly impressed.

 

I feel innately non-inclined to take advice from a pencil neck

 

Indeed. It's a lot of " very serious" talking for a basic advice which is only valid in context.
It's not even psychoacoustics. (But people mix things up here all the time anyways)

You can tell/sell people everything today as long as you talk unagitated.

 

That's what I wondered about too.

 

Funny how the video he keeps refering to says the exact same thing. Talk about regurgitating info.

I was going to write something more rude, but you got it .

How so?

 

Psychoacoustics is about what you think you hear - it's perception. It's a psychological effect
Those so called Hifi enthusiasts are psychoacoustical driven for example.
Audio processing is "technical acoustic" if you like so. It's not just perception. It's a technical effect

People often think that psychoacoustics has to do something with transient behavior. Or how instruments affect us in a certain way. Nothing of this is correct.

 

Last edited: Dec 24, 2022

Ah, I see your point. But as fun as it is to see, i don't think the EQ part was more than just an example of how you could deal with frequency masking. The psychoacoustic "secret" is not the process itslef, but the reasoning behind why you're using it (which is arguably useless).

 

That's right, as everything in audio processing.

However psychoacoustic is about thinking that something has changed acoustically.
But what he shows is not just about thinking that something changed acoustically. He really changed something acoustically.

One is changing cables the other one is eqing.

 

Fundamentals of Psychoacoustics | Unit 3 | MUTOR Science of Music

https://mutor-2.github.io/ScienceOfMusic/units/03/

 

Huh? Aight, i've lost the thread of this, i don't even think we're talking about the same thing and i'm too drunk and OT to continue. Cheers

 

right. psychoacoutics is the auditory version of like the visual illusions you can find all over youtube. its clever trickery to make you see or hear whats not actually happening. in the past i remember audio plays produced, that while listening with headphones, they'd be able to make voices/sounds appear as if they were coming out from anywhere in a 360 degree environment, at any distance from you, and travel around anywhere in that space as well. quite a bizarre effect.

what that fella in the vid is simply describing is the reason why music needs to be mixed

 

Last edited: Dec 24, 2022

No It's not .It might be used for that, but what it really is is the study of percepction, which is also part of regular mixing, even if you are not consciously thinking about that.

Masking is a psychoacoustic phenomenon, loudness too, you deal with that everyday, a lot of stuff in room acoustics have it's roots in psychoacoustics too. It's not the trickery, it's the concepts that CAN be used for trickery, but also on everytday mixing and other stuff even if you're not aware of it, that's the point of the video, to make you aware of how the stuff you do on regular mixing affect perception and why.

EXACTLY! Mr.Pencilneck is explaining the "Why", from the point of view of how human perception works, a.k.a. psychoacoustics.

Alright, i promisse i won't come back to this thread, if still in doubt just grab any book on the topic. Marry christmass ya'll

 

Sherpard tone, the perfect illusion

 

What. No.
Psychoacoustics is the science about how your brain decodes the incoming audial information to determine the position and distance to a sound source. And how different things affect its ability to construct the sense of space from sounds you hear.

 

If only Alan Parsons had access to information like this Dark Side of the Moon might have sounded worth a shit.

 

I always thought psychoacoustics were what my wife thinks I say.

 

I lolled at "psychoacoustic secrets" even before I played the video. Very click-baitable. Bravo.

 

Yes. Not having looked up the definition, the 'off the top of my head' comment was heavily weighted by the word psycho (psychology) in psychoacoustic. However looking it up, in my defense, and as you point out mk_96, auditory illusions is a subset/branch of psychoacoustics. My explanation came up half-assed short, heh.

 

Last edited: Dec 25, 2022

Funny how a totally useless video drive ppl ...