Reducing audible fluctuations in a masker lowers post-masked thresholds by up to 24 dB
Evidence
Masking-period patterns produced by these maskers and test tones are indicated in Fig. 4.32c with masker level as the parameter. Below 75 dB of the 100-Hz masker, no masking occurs. For 85 dB, masking is larger for that part of the period of the masker during which rarefaction occurs. … It is interesting to note that in the region of the condensation maximum, which is in the middle of the pattern, masked threshold becomes even lower than the threshold in quiet indicated by the arrow on the right ordinate of Fig. 4.32c. — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 570
Categorization
- XREF: A masker that makes a signal MORE audible than in silence is counterintuitive; ties to suppression phenomena and two-tone interactions in cochlear mechanics. — connects to: Reduced frequency selectivity partly explains diminished sensitivity to inherent masker fluctuations; Broader cochlear filtering reduces low-frequency noise fluctuations, explaining lost masking release — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 2161; Normal-hearing listeners exploit temporal dips in fluctuating maskers to detect signals. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 551 (+4 more)
- SHARE: Send to anyone working on auditory masking or cochlear mechanics — a masker reducing threshold below quiet is a striking demo of nonlinear auditory processing.
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 570
Broader Connections
- Reduced frequency selectivity partly explains diminished sensitivity to inherent masker fluctuations
#complicates(0.80) - Broader cochlear filtering reduces low-frequency noise fluctuations, explaining lost masking release
#complicates(0.75) — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 2161 - Normal-hearing listeners exploit temporal dips in fluctuating maskers to detect signals.
#qualifies(0.75) — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 551