The Psychoacoustics of Multichannel Audio

This is a tutorial paper giving an introduction to the perception of multichannel sound reproduction. The important underlying psychoacoustic phenomena are reviewed – starting with the behaviour of the auditory periphery and moving on through binaural perception, central binaural phenomena and cognition. The author highlights the way the perception of a recording can be changed according to the number of replay channels used. The paper opens the question of relating perceptual and cognitive responses to directional sound or to sound fields.