Phase-change sensitivity in hearing is bounded by critical bandwidth, scaling with centre frequency.

Evidence

Two effects are clear: firstly, we are most sensitive to phase changes at small values of frequency separation and secondly, the sensitive range is limited by the critical bandwidth, independent of centre frequency. The just-noticeable effective phase difference increases for a centre frequency of 5 kHz at a separation near 500 Hz, while for a centre frequency of 225 Hz this increase starts near 50 Hz. In all three cases, the overall frequency distance of the constituent tones transformed to the corresponding critical-band rate relates closely to 0.5 Bark. — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 1099

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s psychoacoustics reading on critical bands and the Bark scale established in earlier models.