This paper discusses the papers by Moore and Maier, and by Lecumberri and Cooke, which are two of the four position papers in the ICPhS special session on Sound to Sense (S2S). The rationale for our comments is to illuminate and support the hypothesis that speech perception is a dynamic and adaptive perceptual process in the interpretation of the sensory speech signal. As background for the discussion of the two position papers, two further perceptual experiments are described. Their results are discussed with respect to (1) identification of phonetic detail by experimenters and by native and non-native listeners, (2) the perceptual and theoretical status of “detail” as additional versus fundamental auditory information, and (3) challenges in balancing the practical advantages of using tractable goals and data versus development of richer models whose parameters probably more closely reflect the processes of normal speech perception.