Hearing-impaired listeners derive less benefit from steady tonal maskers once spectral resolution is limited.

Evidence

Here, the benefits of frequency selectivity have been reduced by limiting spectral resolution to the 16 vocoder channels. As expected, the MT masker produces very similar results to the GN masker, as both produce very similar outputs from the tone vocoder. The young NH and the age-matched NH groups seem able to take similar advantage of the lack of inherent masker fluctuations in the PT condition. In contrast, the differences between the PT and MT seem less pronounced in the HI listeners; although some differences remain (in contrast to CI users), they are smaller than in the NH listeners. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 2193