How Sound Design Works: From Psychoacoustics to Auditory Media and Product Design

This concise reference book helps readers understand and implement sound design not merely as a technical aspect of production, but as an opportunity for innovative audio design for video. It is grounded in findings from psychoacoustic research: How do people hear, and what role do their personal listening history and individual listening preferences play in this process?

Sound design for moving images is a domain of practitioners in which knowledge is primarily passed down orally. Consequently, there are very few studies in the literature addressing the question of why the audio channel is perceived by audiences as adequate to the visual channel and as effective in its immersive impact.

What fundamental considerations must be taken into account in auditory design? Why do we experience some audiovisual works as more immersive and more poerful in their effect than others?

In a listening test, 240 participants were each played a video through headphones in stereo in one of four versions (two different films, each combined with one of four audio types). The results of this study confirm the practical insight of many professional sound designers: that the sound track, in terms of its immersive effect, constitutes a distinct, highly specialized medium of communication.