# The Unitary Nature of Sounds Matthew Nudds **Opening (not a real abstract):** Auditory perception is distinctive in that it involves the perception of sounds: whatever we hear that is not a sound we hear by hearing the sound it makes. But is there one kind of thing that we hear whenever we hear something? As Soteriou points out in his contribution to this volume, many, if not all, writers on auditory perception have supposed that there is. They suppose that, as Soteriou puts it: There is one kind of thing that is the bearer of audible acoustic features, such as timbre, pitch and loudness-namely sounds. When it comes to determining what sounds are, we should be able to focus on any case in which a sound is heard, no matter what else is heard. (Chapter 2, this volume, p. 34)