Anti-phase signals vs diotic noise yield 18 dB binaural detection advantage around 200-300 Hz

Evidence

The binaural masking level difference (BMLD) has been researched extensively with headphone listening. The most dramatic effect is obtained when the subject is presented with a broadband diotic noise (N0) and binaurally antiphasic sinusoidal signal Sπ. The reference case is SmNm, where both the signal and noise are presented monotically. The BMLD is plotted as a function of frequency in Figure 12.22b, where it can be seen that when the frequency of the signal is about 200–300 Hz, the binaural advantage in signal detection is of the order of 18 dB (Blauert, 1996). — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 1518

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the acoustic communication reading goal: this quantifies the upper bound of binaural processing advantage, relevant to hearing technology and sound source separation applications.