"In this lecture series we will discuss various fundamental and applied issues which arise in designing the sounds for complex systems and for virtual environments."

Sound Perception, Dik J. Hermes

"The Bark scale ranges from 1 to 24 Barks, corresponding to the first 24 critical bands of hearing [39]. The published Bark band edges are given in Hertz as [0, 100, 200, 300, 400, 510, 630, 770, 920, 1080, 1270, 1480, 1720, 2000, 2320, 2700, 3150, 3700, 4400, 5300, 6400, 7700, 9500, 12000, 15500]. The published band centers in Hertz are [50, 150, 250, 350, 450, 570, 700, 840, 1000, 1170, 1370, 1600, 1850, 2150, 2500, 2900, 3400, 4000, 4800, 5800, 7000, 8500, 10500, 13500]."

The Bark Frequency Scale

"The amplitude of a audio waveform is directly related to it’s “pressure” height above zero pressure and/or voltage. Unfortunately, the amplitude of the voltage that is creating the waveform is always changing. If we simply take an average of that swinging voltage, our result is approximately zero, which doesn’t do at all. So we normally use another measurement technique called RMS (Root Mean Square – don’t worry about the math) that derives a signal level from the changing voltage that expresses its power relative to a DC (direct current - not an audio signal) voltage. For a sine wave, that RMS value is about .7 of the peak positive voltage of the sine. For a square wave it is the same as the peak voltage. So, the RMS level depends on the shape of the wave, what the calculistas call the “area under the curve."

Moulton Laboratories :: Way Beyond Spectral Management: Compression as Timbre

"About the frequency thing: our hearing mechanism hears across a range of about thirty so-called “critical bands,” each about a third of an octave wide. Subjective loudness is proportional to the actual number of critical bands that are invoked by a given sound. A sine wave (invoking a single critical band) will sound very soft compared to pink noise (invoking all thirty bands) of the same amplitude."

Moulton Laboratories :: Way Beyond Spectral Management: Compression as Timbre

"Overall, our sensation of loudness is a highly compressed version of physical reality, so that in order to change a sound so that it sounds twice as loud, we have to multiply the power of the signal by 10 (which is the same as multiplying its RMS voltage by approximately 3)."

Moulton Laboratories :: Way Beyond Spectral Management: Compression as Timbre

"What this illustrates is that you can increase apparent loudness by a whole lot without increasing the level (hell, you can even decrease it by quite a bit) just by increasing the length of time the sound is at its level. This is done by squashing the peak and then boosting the overall level."

Moulton Laboratories :: Way Beyond Spectral Management: Compression as Timbre

http://beingmusicalbeinghuman.com/2012/04/16/music-made-for-peak-perception/ →

"The results for the Monolake track led me to hypothesize that what Sound Check was actually doing was applying an RMS limit on tracks of around -15 dB (with a /- that I haven’t calculated yet). Anything below that gets turned up and anything above that gets turned down (with the precaution that turning up never results in clipping by going above the 0 dB max). This was confirmed when I normalized one of my test master’s to an RMS of -15 dB. This version of the track, when played in iTunes with Sound Check enabled, played at the same volume as with Sound Check disabled.
Where an object of mastering is to create a version of a song which plays at the optimum level across playback devices, where iTunes is understood as rapidly becoming a primary application for playback, and where Sound Check is often enabled as a preference in iTunes, it stands to reason that those producing masters today should be working to create versions of songs for which Sound Check does not need change the levels. As such, mastering for iTunes can be understood as creating a quality master which has an average RMS of -15 dB."

Op Ed: What Do “Mastered for iTunes” and “Sound Check” Do To Music Listening?

Mileage and headlines | Kim Lajoie's blog →

"Dr. Floyd Toole (of Harman International, the makers of JBL speakers) showed that averaging all the different consumer speakers (some bright, some with too much bass or midrange etc.) one ends up with a very flat curve which is empirical proof that mastering with an extremely accurate and flat playback system yields a product that sounds correct on more systems."

Bobby Owsinski’s Big Picture Production Blog: Bob Ludwig On Mastering For Earbuds

PLoS ONE: Expression of Emotion in Eastern and Western Music Mirrors Vocalization →

"The research demonstrated that the dynamic change of the bass drum does have an important effect on the intensity of movement while dancing. It seems a phenomenon that occurs commonly unnoticed by dancers. These results show that the increasing role of the bass drum in contemporary dance music is not just a stylistic element, but indeed has a positive effect on the amount of movement made by the dancers."

The impact of the bass drum on body movement in spontaneous dance | IPEM - Dept. of Musicology

Tips for Controlling Vocal Sibilance →

Practice (and perform) your parts – don’t just sequence them | Kim Lajoie's blog →

Convolution—in words | EarLevel Engineering →