We tend to always associate flavour with taste and smell. But there's another sense at play, one we rarely credit: sound. It turns out, our ears are helping us judge freshness, quality, and even how satisfying a food and meals feels.

1. The Sizzle: Flavour Starts with a Sound

That sharp hiss when a steak hits a hot pan? It’s not just dramatic flair. The searing sound signals to your brain that something delicious is underway.
Psychologist Charles Spence, from the University of Oxford, has extensively researched how sound enhances flavour perception. He found that cooking sounds like sizzling can prime our expectations and actually heighten our perception of taste. Read the study overview in Time.The sizzle doesn’t just cook, it performs.

2. The Crunch: A Built In Freshness Test

Ever bitten into a silent apple? Probably not more than once. Crunchy foods are sonically honest, loud, crisp, and satisfying.

In a experiment, Spence and colleague Massimiliano Zampini found that by subtly amplifying the crunch sound of potato chips through headphones, participants rated the same chips up to 15% fresher and crisper. The results were published in the journal Appetite. Referenced here in The New Yorker.

Our brains trust the sound of a snack more than the look of it.

3. The Slurp and Clink: Dining Is a Shared Soundscape

In Japan, slurping ramen is encouraged, it signals enjoyment. Around the world, the clink of glasses or the hum of a busy restaurant creates a subtle backdrop that shapes how we eat.

Spence’s team also showed that carbonated drinks with more “bubbly” sounds are rated as sweeter, and that ambient restaurant noise can impact eating speed and food perception. Read more via FoodUnfolded and Epicurious.

Dining, it turns out, is a kind of symphony, and every utensil plays a part.

Final Note

Food is a multi-sensory orchestra and sound is the baseline. It helps us assess freshness, elevates anticipation, deepens social dining experience, and even makes food taste better as we don’t just eat with our mouths, we dine with all our senses.

Next time you cook or eat, quiet down or tune in: that crackle, crunch, and clink isn't just noise, it's quality control and emotional flavour enhancer. So, next bite? Listen closely.

At RESONIKS, We Listen for More Than Taste

Just as your brain interprets the crunch of a chip or the clink of a glass to judge quality, our technology listens to materials in much the same way.

At RESONIKS, we use the science of sound not to enhance flavour, but to detect flaws hidden deep inside manufactured parts. By analysing how sound waves resonate through different materials, we can spot defects that the eye can’t see. Whether it’s an off-note in a stir or a subtle acoustic anomaly in a metal casting, sound tells us more than we think, about food, about materials, about trust. The future of quality? It doesn’t just look right. It sounds right.