# What Are Auditory Objects? Matthew Nudds 2009 **Abstract:** Our auditory experience involves the experience of auditory objects— sequences of distinct sounds, or parts of continuous sounds—that are experienced as grouped together into a single sound or “stream” of sounds. In this paper I argue that it is not possible to explain what it is to experience an auditory object as such—i.e. to experience a sequence of sounds as grouped—in purely auditory terms; rather, to experience an auditory object as such is to experience a sequence of sounds as having been (apparently) produced by the same source. The tenth variation of Bach’s Goldberg Variations is a short four-voice fugue. It begins with a subject in the bass (on G below middle C) which is answered after four bars in the tenor; the soprano voice begins after a further four bars, and the final alto voice begins four bars later. When played at a normal tempo one doesn’t hear the variation as a sequence of notes in the order in which they are played. As each new voice begins its notes are heard as a distinct melody—a separate voice parallel to the other voices—so that after twelve bars one hears four parallel melodies playing simultaneously. It is possible to attend selectively to each melody, but difficult to attend to more than one simultaneously; instead, when one attends to one melody it is heard against a background of the others. Although one can hear the order of and temporal relations between the notes that make up each melody, it is impossible to hear the order of the notes that