Free-field threshold testing yields thresholds 15 dB better than headphones
Evidence
Absolute thresholds collected from freefield measures can be more than 15 dB better than testing over headphones. Acoustic interactions between the sound and the body, amplification by anatomical structures, and binaural effects contribute to these differences. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 351
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
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Related
- Free-field hearing thresholds can exceed headphone thresholds by over 15 dB (similarity 0.97)
- Two-ear listening improves sound-field thresholds by 10 to 15 dB (similarity 0.83)
- Hearing thresholds were first systematically mapped in the 1930s using two distinct measurement paradigms (similarity 0.82)
- Modern insert headphones can limit output and measure hearing thresholds (similarity 0.82)
- Headphone studies reveal ILD perception abilities hidden by natural field acoustics (similarity 0.81)
- Psychoacoustic headphones distort sound unless free-field equalized to compensate their band-pass response (similarity 0.81)
- Threshold measurement method, not listener differences, caused the 10 dB gap (similarity 0.81)
- Threshold is a statistical artifact, not a sharp boundary of audibility (similarity 0.80)
- Headphone experiments reveal auditory abilities that free-field studies cannot expose. (similarity 0.80)
- A widely used audiometric standard was calibrated roughly 10 dB off (similarity 0.80)
- Headphone measurements vary most between individuals at high frequencies. (similarity 0.80)
- Added masking noise prevents off-frequency cues in hearing experiments (similarity 0.80)
- Minimum audible field and pressure measurements differ in listening conditions and calibration. (similarity 0.80)
- Absolute threshold is the minimum detectable sound level without external noise (similarity 0.79)
- Hearing thresholds are clinically tested at octave-spaced frequencies covering the speech range (similarity 0.79)