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Psychoacoustics is basically about how what reaches our ears gets processed by our brain and translated into "what we hear" which isn't quite the same as the sound that is actually in the listening room or whatever other space we're in. For example we can hear sound reflections as separate sounds provided the delay between the direct sound and the reflection is long enough but if it isn't long enough the reflection is "fused" with the direct sound but what we perceive is a sound with some of the characteristics of the direct sound and the reflection.
There's a lot of other things affecting audio matters in psychoacoustics as well so I'm not going to try to give a brief summary or account. What I will say is that if you're interested in something like physical room treatment, then psychoacoustic factors can play a big part in getting the result you want.
The best reference source I can give you for psychoacoustics relating to audio is a book by Floyd Toole called "Sound Reproduction - Loudspeakers and Rooms". Toole is a noted acoustics researcher who has a also worked in the area of loudspeaker design and his book covers physical acoustics, psychoacoustics, how the two of them interact in our listening experience, rooms and room treatment, and also loudspeaker design and how loudspeakers interact with the room. It's a solid, detailed book. over 500 pages long. It's not an easy read but that's because there's a lot in it. It's written for non-technical readers and written well but you'll find yourself needing to think about what's being said and it's a book which repays re-reading in parts or in whole, especially if you start playing with your speaker and listening position placement and/or physical room treatment. I've got a lot out of it and it has helped me a lot in improving the sound in my room. My one complaint about it is that when it comes to things like room treatment it's really biased towards multi-channel setups, not stereo, but unfortunately i don't know of any other similar book that focusses on stereo listening setups. Toole does give lots of info that is relevant to stereo but you have to cherry pick those parts for yourself.
The only other books I have on acoustics are "An Introduction to the Psychology of Hearing" by Brian Moore and "The Master Handbook of Acoustics by F. Alton Everest. Everest's book is the first I got and is largely slanted towards DIY recording studio issues though it does cover listening rooms. The focus is more on physical room treatment, especially how the various treatments work and how to build your own. It does cover a fair bit of psychoacoustics but I don't think Everest's understanding and treatment of psychoacoustics matches Toole's. He also interprets some of Toole's research in a slightly different way to Toole and I've come to think that Toole's take on his own research is better than Everest's. In a lot of ways I regard Everest's book as a good complement to Toole's and I think the best way to use the two of them if you look at both is to take Toole for the theory, what physical treatments to use and where to place them, and to use Everest for understanding how the different physical treatments work and how to build your own if you want to go that way. Moore's book is heavily into psychoacoustics but it's a basic university textbook on the topic, heavily mathematical, and I've never been able to work my way through it. I don't recommend it for the average audiophile. Stick to Toole for psychoacoustic theory, he tells you what's going on in plain english, tells you why it's relevant to audio listening, and leaves out all of the high level maths.
Roon Nucleus+, Devilalet Expert 140 Pro CI, Focal Sopra 2, PS Audio P12, Keces P8 LPS, Uptone Audio EtherREGEN with optical fibre link to my router, Shunyata Alpha NR and Sigma NR power cables, Shunyata Sigma ethernet cables, Shunyata Alpha V2 speaker cables, Grand Prix Audio Monaco rack, RealTRAPS acoustic treatment.
Brisbane, Qld, Australia
