This monograph provides novel insights into cognitive mechanisms underlying the processing of sound and music in different environments. A solid understanding of these mechanisms is vital for numerous technological applications such as for example information retrieval from distributed musical databases or building expert systems. In order to investigate the cognitive mechanisms of music perception fundamentals of hearing psychophysiology and principles of music perception are presented. In addition, some computational intelligence methods are reviewed, such as rough sets, fuzzy logic, artificial neural networks, decision trees and genetic algorithms. The applications of hybrid decision systems to problem solving in music and acoustics are exemplified and discussed on the basis of obtained experimental results.
