The way in which a cavitation zone develops in a focused pulsed ultrasound field is studied in this work. Sonoluminescence (SL), total hydrophone output and cavitation noise spectra have been recorded across a gradual, smooth increase in applied voltage. It is shown that the cavitation zone passes through a number of stages of evolution, according to increasing ultrasound intensity, decreasing pulse period and increasing ultrasound pulse duration. Sonoluminescence is absent in the first phase and the hydrophone output spectra consists of a main line with two or three harmonics whose intensity is much lower than that of the main (fundamental) line. The second stage sees the onset of SL whose intensity increases smoothly and is accompanied by the appearance of higher harmonics and subharmonics in the cavitation noise spectra. In some cases, the wide-band (WBN) component can be seen in noise spectra during the final part of the second stage. In the third stage, SL intensity increases significantly and often quite sharply, while WBN intensity increases in the same manner. This is accompanied by a synchronous increase in the absorption of ultrasound by the cavitation zone, which is manifested in a sharp decrease in the hydrophone output. In the fourth stage, both SL and WBN intensities tend to decrease despite the increased voltage applied to the transducer. Furthermore, the fundamental line tends to decrease in strength as well, despite the increasing ultrasound intensity. The obtained results clearly identify the different stages of cavitation zone development using cavitation noise spectra analyses. We then hypothesize that three of the above stages may be responsible for three known types of ultrasound action on biological cells: damping viability, reversible cell damage (sonoporation) and irreversible damage/cytotoxicity.