Perception of sound: Perception of sound by the brain

Without getting too philosophical, let's simply say that perception of sound is a subjective affair, as is the perception of reality after all. A sound in itself is what it is, but our perception of it varies, seeing that it depends on innumerable variables. Some of them are: our position in relation to the sound, the conditions of our hearing apparatus and especially the way our brain interprets the sound.

Just like sight has a limited perception of light, hearing also is capable of perceiving only a part of the acoustic waves that surround us and therefore gives us a partial audio experience. Moreover the waves that are perceived get elaborated by the brain that "interprets" the sounds it has to process. Shortly we will describe the behaviour of sound from a perception point of view and we'll demonstrate how in certain conditions the brain's interpretative faculties come into action and indeed "interpret" reality rather than accurately reproducing it. A very good example of this fact is described in the following section and is called beatings [Beatings ] .