Auditory filters are analyzed one component at a time to build up complex effects

Evidence

As is the case with most psychoacoustic investigations, masking is usually discussed in terms of the masking effect one pure tone can have on another, and the result is extended to complex sounds by considering the masking effect in relation to individual components. (This is similar, for example, to the approach adopted in the section on consonance and dissonance in Chapter 3, Section 3.3.2.) In psychoacoustic terms, the threshold of hearing of the maskee is shifted when in the presence of the masker. This provides the basis upon which masking can be quantified as the shift of a listener’s threshold of hearing curve when a masker is present. — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 1593

Categorization

Category: Craft and Method

• XREF: The reductionist approach here — extending pure-tone results to complex sounds — echoes how engineers synthesize complex soundscapes from pure components, relevant to the reader’s whole project on listening.

Related

• Masking is quantified by the shift in a listener’s hearing-threshold curve (similarity 0.90)
• Masking patterns reveal the ear’s internal psychological representation of a sound. (similarity 0.85)
• Masked sound components are perceptually ignored within complex sounds (similarity 0.85)
• Masker effectiveness is determined solely by power falling within one auditory filter. (similarity 0.84)
• Complex real-world maskers are less effective than simple energetic ones predict (similarity 0.83)
• Masking noise prevents listeners from using unintended spectral cues (similarity 0.83)
• Low-pass noise can mask harmonics to create the same virtual-pitch stimulus as filtering. (similarity 0.83)
• One tone can make another tone inaudible through masking (similarity 0.83)
• Three acoustic properties determine whether a sound masks another. (similarity 0.82)
• Critical-band noise masking can be approximated by simple tone complexes (similarity 0.82)
• Increasing stimulus level broadens auditory filters and causes upward spread of masking (similarity 0.82)
• Masking depends on acoustic relationships between masker and signal, not on subjective noise. (similarity 0.82)
• Simultaneous-masking filters may understate the ear’s true spectral resolution (similarity 0.82)
• Simultaneous tones become harder to perceive due to masking effects (similarity 0.82)
• Masking by bandlimited noise depends only on masker energy within the critical band. (similarity 0.82)