Psychoacoustics is the scientific study of sound perception. More specifically, it is the branch of science studying the psychological and physiological responses associated with sound (including speech and music). It can be further categorized as a branch of psychophysics.

Hearing is not a purely mechanical phenomenon of wave propagation, but is also a sensory and perceptual event; in other words, when a person hears something, that something arrives at the ear as a mechanical sound wave traveling through the air, but within the ear it is transformed into neural action potentials. These nerve pulses then travel to the brain where they are perceived. Hence, in many problems in acoustics, such as for audio processing, it is advantageous to take into account not just the mechanics of the environment, but also the fact that both the ear and the brain are involved in a person’s listening experience.

The inner ear, for example, does significant signal processing in converting sound waveforms into neural stimuli, so certain differences between waveforms may be imperceptible.Data compression techniques, such as MP3, make use of this fact. In addition, the ear has a nonlinear response to sounds of different intensity levels, this nonlinear response is called loudness. Telephone networks and audio noise reduction systems make use of this fact by nonlinearly compressing data samples before transmission, and then expanding them for playback. Another effect of the ear's nonlinear response is that sounds that are close in frequency produce phantom beat notes, or intermodulation distortion products.

Jack Moffitt is a computer scientist, software developer and entrepreneur. He is co-author of the GNU GPL licensed streaming media server Icecast and often works on software using XMPP, JavaScript and Erlang. He also worked as executive director of Xiph.Org Foundation and developer of Ogg Vorbis project. Moffitt's work with Erlang has made him a regular presenter at the Erlang Factory conference series.

While working on Chesspark.com Moffit led the development team that created Strophe - a library for writing XMPP clients, implemented in JavaScript and C for developers of XMPP applications. Moffit's team also released several other open source projects related to XMPP.

In November 2008 Moffitt co-founded Collecta, a real-time search company which uses XMPP, including the Strophe library, for communication between the client and server. Collecta launched its public beta in June 2009. Moffitt served as CTO for Collecta until some time in late 2010 when he left the company to work on other projects. Moffit's current project appears to be called Lunchbox Labs according to information on his LinkedIn profile. Lunchbox Labs produced the iOS word game SnackWords. In 2011, Moffit's name appeared with a credit as one of the "Server Developers" for the iOS MMORPG ShadowCities produced by Grey Area Software.

Eric Clayton (born 1 December 1967) is an American singer-songwriter and musician, best known for his work in the influential gothic symphonic metal group Saviour Machine which he formed with his brother Jeff Clayton in 1989. Eric Clayton is notable for his deep baritone operatic vocals, and he has done guest vocals on Ayreon's album The Human Equation, Divinefire's album Glory Thy Name, Narnia's album The Great Fall, Wedding Party's album Anthems, and Eva O's album Damnation (Ride the Madness) as well as Seventh Circle's album "The Struggle." Clayton also produced the two aforementioned albums as well as many Saviour Machine albums. Clayton is known for his theatrical live performances and dark, peculiar appearances and masks.

Eric Clayton's most ambitious work has been Saviour Machine, which released two studio albums Saviour Machine I (1993) and Saviour Machine II (1994) before starting the Legend trilogy that strictly focuses on the end times, Book of Revelation and prophecies about the biblical apocalypse. The band has also released a compilation album titled Synopsis (2003), the live albums Live in Deutschland 1996 and Live in Deutschland 2002. The latter was also filmed and released on DVD format. The band was originally signed to Christian metal label Frontline Records but gothic metal in all its visual appearance was misunderstood in US Christian scenes, and eventually Saviour Machine began work with MCM Music and Massacre Records, labels based in Germany where the band was more popular than in US. In 1997 Saviour Machine performed at Wacken Open Air, the biggest exclusively metal music festival in the world.

3-2-1 Contact is an American science educational television show that aired on PBS from 1980 to 1988, and an adjoining children's magazine. The show, a production of the Children's Television Workshop, teaches scientific principles and their applications. Dr. Edward G. Atkins, who was responsible for much of the scientific content of the show, felt that the TV program wouldn't replace a classroom but would open the viewers to ask questions about the scientific purpose of things.

3-2-1 Contact was the brainchild of Samuel Y. Gibbon, Jr., who had been the executive producer of The Electric Company for CTW from 1971 to 1977. (Gibbon actually left CTW before Contact's production began, though he was still credited as "Senior Consultant.")

The first season of 65 programs began airing January 14, 1980 on select PBS member stations; it featured a cast of three college students who discussed science in an on-campus room known as the Workshop. The first season came to an end on April 11, 1980, but funds for more episodes were not sufficient until 1982.