Masking increments peak when the two individual maskers yield equal threshold shifts

Evidence

In order to characterize the thresholds produced by one of the maskers, only one number will be used as an index: the masked threshold will be indicated by the level of the test tone at a certain frequency (L1 or L 2), and the increment in masked threshold produced by adding the second masker will be indicated by the incremental value, f1LT. One of the most important variables is the difference between the two thresholds (L1 and L 2) produced by each of the maskers. This difference in masked threshold will be called f1Dr (1-2). It must be expected that the increment in threshold, f1LT, will be largest when the difference between the masked thresholds produced by each masker is zero, i.e. when each masker produces the same masked threshold. If the threshold produced by one masker is much larger than that produced by the other, then the masking produced by the maskers together is likely to be dominated by the masker that produces larger masking. — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 619

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the two-masker framework: the increment f1LT and the threshold-difference index f1Dr(1-2), along with the dominance prediction.