Audibility thresholds rise about 10 dB per tenfold sound duration reduction

Evidence

When sOllnd bursts are reduced in duration to less than about 200 ms, their level must be raiscd to remain audible. As described in Sect. 4.4.1, the increment in sound level needed is about 10 dB for a factor of 10 reduction in sound (luration. This dependence of thrcshold in quiet and masked threshold on the sonnd duration corresponds to a temporal integration of the sound intensity within a timc window of 200 IllS. This is why the effect is frequently called temporal integration in the hearing system. For hearing-impaired listeners, tcmporal integration often follows a distinctly different course compared to that of subject:o with normal hearing. In extreme cases, the :oarne threshold may he obt ained by a hearing-impaired li:otener for sounds of 2 ms and 200 ms duration, even though over this range a rise in level of 20 dB is necessary to maintain the audibility of the sound burst for subjects with normal hearing. — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 1944

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines temporal integration via the 200 ms window and the 10 dB-per-decade duration rule.
• XREF: Connects to the intensity-duration tradeoff seen in loudness and masking material from earlier chapters on temporal summation.