Detecting sounds does not guarantee discriminating them, which also needs intact critical-band processing

Evidence

Pure-tone audiometry tests a subject’s ability to detect different frequen­ cies, and the dBHL values indicate the extent to which the subject’s hearing is reduced at different frequencies. It thus indicates those frequency regions in which a subject is perhaps less sensitive than normally hearing listeners. This could, for example, be interpreted in practice in terms of timbral dif­ ferences between specific musical sounds that might not be heard, or vowel or other speech sounds that might be difficult to perceive. However, puretone audiometry does not provide a complete test of a subject’s hearing ability to discriminate between different sounds. Discrimination of sounds does start with the ability to detect the sounds, but it also requires appro­ priate sound processing to be available. For example, if the critical bands (see Section 2.2) are widened, they are less able to separate the components of complex sounds—the most important to us being speech. — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 2352

Categorization

• XREF: Builds on the reader’s prior knowledge of critical bands from auditory filtering — ability to detect is necessary but not sufficient for comprehension. — connects to: Autonomous recording advanced but automatic sound identification remains unsolved — Almo Farina, Soundscape Ecology: Principles,…, 113; Environmental sounds remain identifiable even when severely spectrally filtered — Almo Farina, Soundscape Ecology: Principles,…, 995