Psychoacoustics

The branch of perceptual psychology that studies how humans subjectively perceive sound - loudness, pitch, timbre, spatial location, foreground/background segregation, and masking. Psychoacoustic principles underpin accessible audio design: screen reader pacing, earcon and auditory icon choice, audio description timing, sonification of data, and the mixing of non-verbal soundscapes so that important cues remain perceptually salient without overwhelming the listener. Standards for loudness normalisation (e.g. EBU R128, LUFS) and findings about auditory masking directly inform how accessible audio content is produced.