Low-frequency suppressors reduce emissions by saturating cochlear feedback-loop nonlinearity

Evidence

Careful studies of the behaviour of the hardware model under such conditions show that the very large low-frequency components drive the nonlinearity in the feedback loops into saturation. Thus the feedback gain is strongly reduced, the decay is faster and therefore the emission is drastically reduced. Moreover, the model gives a simple but effective explanation of the behaviour measured in masking-period patterns and in suppression-period patterns, in that the second derivative of the suppressor’s time function (dotted in Fig. 3.24c) can be assumed to be the source of masking and suppression. — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 385

Categorization

• DEFINE: Proposes that the second derivative of the suppressor waveform drives masking and suppression.