Masking disrupts everyday speech and music whenever competing sounds differ in level

Evidence

There are two ways of overcoming this phenomenon of masking. We can either wait until the truck passed and then continue our conversation, or we can raise our voice to produce more speech power and greater loudness. Our partner then can hear the speech sound again. Similar effects take place in most pieces of music. One instrument may be masked by another if one of them produces high levels while the other remains faint. If the loud instrument pauses, the faint one becomes audible again. These are typical examples of simultaneous masking. — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 397

Categorization

• XREF: Connects naturally to the reader’s soundscape/ambient-noise work — the truck-passing example mirrors lo-fi soundscape masking in Schafer.