Short tone bursts widen in spectrum, so experiments use Gaussian-shaped bursts

Evidence

Reducing the duration of a tone burst produces a widening of its spectrum. This effect limits the shortest useable duration to a value at which the spectral width corresponds to that of the critical band. A quick rise time that occurs with a narrow spectrum is produced by Gaussian rise and fall. Therefore Gaussian-shaped tone bursts are usually used to measure temporal effects. — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 494

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• DEFINE: Explains why Gaussian-shaped test stimuli are standard in psychoacoustic temporal measurements.

Related

• Gaussian-shaped tone bursts minimize spectral splatter in gated tones (similarity 0.92)
• Perceived duration of pauses differs from perceived duration of equivalent tone bursts (similarity 0.83)
• Tone bursts are heard as longer than pauses of equal physical length (similarity 0.83)
• Subjective duration of sound bursts can diverge drastically from objective duration (similarity 0.82)
• A 100 ms tone burst and a 400 ms pause feel equally long (similarity 0.81)
• Subjective and physical duration stay proportional only above about 100 ms (similarity 0.81)
• Physically equal spacing only yields subjectively uniform rhythm for steep-envelope bursts (similarity 0.80)
• Gaussian shapes minimize the bandwidth-duration product (similarity 0.80)
• Noise-burst masked thresholds rise more gradually than tone-burst thresholds with shorter duration (similarity 0.79)
• Gaussian gating minimizes the bandwidth-duration product for tone bursts. (similarity 0.79)
• Very brief test tones stay within a critical band only at high centre frequencies. (similarity 0.79)
• Loudness halves for every tenfold decrease in tone duration below 100 ms (similarity 0.79)
• Shorter tone bursts drastically worsen level discrimination while longer ones do not help (similarity 0.79)
• A single tone burst yields a continuous spectrum while periodic pulses yield line spectra (similarity 0.79)
• Shorter masker and test-tone durations flatten the lower slope of pulsation patterns (similarity 0.78)