Auditory events describe the subjective perception, when listening to a certain sound situation. This term was introduced by Jens Blauert (Ruhr-University Bochum) in the year 1966, in order to distinguish clearly between the physical sound field and the auditory perception of the sound.
Auditory events are the central objects of psychoacoustical

Psychoacoustics

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...

 investgations.
Focus of these investigations is the relationship between the characteristics of a physical sound field and the corresponding perception of listeners. From this relationship conclusions can be drawn about the processing methods of the human auditory system

Auditory system

The auditory system is the sensory system for the sense of hearing.- Outer ear :The folds of cartilage surrounding the ear canal are called the pinna...

.

Aspects of auditory event investigations can be:

• is there an auditory event?
  Is a certain sound noticeable?
  => Determination of perception thresholds like hearing threshold
  Absolute threshold of hearing
  The absolute threshold of hearing is the minimum sound level of a pure tone that an average ear with normal hearing can hear with no other sound present. The absolute threshold relates to the sound that can just be heard by the organism...
  
  , auditory masking
  Auditory masking
  Auditory masking occurs when the perception of one sound is affected by the presence of another sound.- Simultaneous masking :Simultaneous masking is when a sound is made inaudible by a "masker", a noise or unwanted sound of the same duration as the original sound.-Critical bandwidth:If two sounds...
  
   thresholds etc.
• Which characteristics has the auditory event?
  => Determination of loudness
  Loudness
  Loudness is the quality of a sound that is primarily a psychological correlate of physical strength . More formally, it is defined as "that attribute of auditory sensation in terms of which sounds can be ordered on a scale extending from quiet to loud."Loudness, a subjective measure, is often...
  
  , pitch, sound
  Sound
  Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...
  
  , harshness
  Harshness
  Harshness , in music information retrieval, is a Non-Contextual Low-Level Audio Descriptors that represents one dimension of the multi-dimensional psychoacoustic feature called as musical timbre....
  
   etc.
• How is the spatial impression of the auditory event?
  => Determination of sound localization
  Sound localization
  Sound localization refers to a listener's ability to identify the location or origin of a detected sound in direction and distance. It may also refer to the methods in acoustical engineering to simulate the placement of an auditory cue in a virtual 3D space .The sound localization mechanisms of the...
  
  , lateralization, perceived direction etc.
• When can differences in auditory events be noticed?
  How big are the discrimination possibilities of the auditory system?
  => Determination of just noticeable difference
  Just noticeable difference
  In psychophysics, a just noticeable difference, customarily abbreviated with lowercase letters as jnd, is the smallest detectable difference between a starting and secondary level of a particular sensory stimulus...
  
  s

Relationships between sound field and auditory events

The sound field is described by physical quantities

Physical quantity

A physical quantity is a physical property of a phenomenon, body, or substance, that can be quantified by measurement.-Definition of a physical quantity:Formally, the International Vocabulary of Metrology, 3rd edition defines quantity as:...

, while auditory events are described by quantities of psychoacoustical perception.
Below you can find a list with physical sound field quantities and the related psychoacoustical quantities of corresponding auditory events.
Mostly there is no simple or proportional relationship between sound field characteristics and auditory events.
For example the auditory event property loudness

Loudness

Loudness is the quality of a sound that is primarily a psychological correlate of physical strength . More formally, it is defined as "that attribute of auditory sensation in terms of which sounds can be ordered on a scale extending from quiet to loud."Loudness, a subjective measure, is often...

 depends not only on the physical quantity sound pressure

Sound pressure

Sound pressure or acoustic pressure is the local pressure deviation from the ambient atmospheric pressure caused by a sound wave. Sound pressure can be measured using a microphone in air and a hydrophone in water...

 but also on the spectral characteristics

Spectrum

A spectrum is a condition that is not limited to a specific set of values but can vary infinitely within a continuum. The word saw its first scientific use within the field of optics to describe the rainbow of colors in visible light when separated using a prism; it has since been applied by...

 of the sound and on the sound history.

sound field characteristics	auditory event
sound pressure level	loudness Loudness Loudness is the quality of a sound that is primarily a psychological correlate of physical strength . More formally, it is defined as "that attribute of auditory sensation in terms of which sounds can be ordered on a scale extending from quiet to loud."Loudness, a subjective measure, is often...
frequency Frequency Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. It is also referred to as temporal frequency.The period is the duration of one cycle in a repeating event, so the period is the reciprocal of the frequency...	pitch
spectrum Spectrum A spectrum is a condition that is not limited to a specific set of values but can vary infinitely within a continuum. The word saw its first scientific use within the field of optics to describe the rainbow of colors in visible light when separated using a prism; it has since been applied by...	timbre Timbre In music, timbre is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, such as string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the...
position of a sound source	sound localization Sound localization Sound localization refers to a listener's ability to identify the location or origin of a detected sound in direction and distance. It may also refer to the methods in acoustical engineering to simulate the placement of an auditory cue in a virtual 3D space .The sound localization mechanisms of the...