An auditory illusion is an illusion of hearing, the aural equivalent of an optical illusion: the listener hears either sounds which are not present in the stimulus, or "impossible" sounds.^[1] In short, auditory illusions highlight areas where the human ear and brain, as organic, makeshift tools, differ from perfect audio receptors (for better or for worse).

Examples of auditory illusions:

• hearing a missing fundamental frequency, given other parts of the harmonic series
• Various psychoacoustic tricks of lossy Audio compression
• Binaural beats
• Deutsch's scale illusion
• Glissando illusion
• Illusory continuity of tones
• McGurk effect
• Octave illusion/Deutsch's High-Low Illusion
• the Shepard tone or scale, and the Deutsch tritone paradox

Notes

See also

• Auditory system
• Barber pole -- auditory illusions compared to visual illusions
• Doppler effect not an illusion, but real physical phenomenon
• Holophonics
• Pitch circularity
• Psychoacoustics
• Tinnitus

External links

• Demonstrations of various auditory illusions at Kyushu Institute of Design
• Diana Deutsch's Web Page
• The Virtual Barber - Selection of Auditory Illusions

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