An auditory illusion is an illusion of hearing, the sound equivalent of an optical illusion: the listener hears either sounds which are not present in the stimulus, or "impossible" sounds. In short, audio 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:

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

See also

• Psychoacoustics
• Optical illusion
• Tinnitus
• Doppler effect - not an illusion, but real physical phenomenon

External links

• Demonstrations of various auditory illusions at Kyushu Institute of Design
• Diana Deutsch's Web Page
• "You must be hearing things", CBC Radio's Quirks & Quarks for Kids

Auditory illusions