Sixty years on from Pierre Schaeffer’s call for ‘primacy of the ear’ (primauté de l’oreille), this article asks an ostensibly simple question: whose ear/aural perception is being referred to when we talk of and compose under this guiding principle? Is there a tacit preselected audiometric norm or even a pair of golden ears, at its core? The article will problematise the uncompromising modernist notion espoused by Babbitt of a ‘suitably equipped receptor’ (Babbitt 1958), and posit examples of well-known composers whose hearing markedly diverged from the otologically normal, an acoustics standard from which A-weighted decibels is predicated (ISO 226:2003). In conclusion the concept of auraldiverse hearing is proposed and creative strategies that eschew or problematise auraltypical archetypes in sonic arts practice and theory wherever they may lie are encouraged.

中文翻译：

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“耳朵的首要地位”——但谁的耳朵？：声音艺术实践和话语中的听觉多样性案例

从 Pierre Schaeffer 呼吁“耳朵至上”的 60 年过去了（primauté de l'oreille)，这篇文章提出了一个表面上简单的问题：当我们在这个指导原则下谈论和创作时，指的是谁的耳朵/听觉感知？其核心是否有一个默认的预选听力标准，甚至是一对金耳朵？这篇文章将质疑 Babbitt 所拥护的不妥协的现代主义概念，即“适当装备的接收器”（Babbitt 1958），并举出一些著名作曲家的例子，他们的听力明显不同于耳科正常，这是 A 加权分贝的声学标准。预测（ISO 226:2003）。总之，提出了听觉多样性听力的概念，并鼓励在声音艺术实践和理论中避免或质疑听觉典型原型的创造性策略，无论它们可能存在。