Masking effectiveness depends only on masker power inside the critical band.

Evidence

Using his experiments on the critical band, Fletcher developed the power spectrum model of masking, which first posits that the ear functions like a bank of band-pass auditory filters, with many individual filters tuned to specific center frequencies. Secondly and importantly, after filtering, the only determining factor of masking effectiveness is the power of the masker that falls within the critical band (or filter) surrounding the signal being detected. Increases in the power within the critical band will yield increases in the signal level needed for detection. This model accounts for Fletcher’s original (1940) data, and is still in use today due to its success in predicting masking data for experiments that have used steady-state maskers. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 478

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the power spectrum model of masking, a core concept the reader explicitly wants in models and theories.