Single auditory nerve fibres encode only a narrow 20-40 dB dynamic range.

Evidence

The auditory nerve fibres show spontaneous firing even when no sound enters the ear. When the sound level is increased, the firing rate grows monotonically but starts to saturate above a specific level, as shown in Figure 7.16. The dynamic range is relatively narrow, about 20–40 dB for a single neuron (Moore, 2012). — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 785

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to puzzle of how the ear spans ~120 dB dynamic range via population coding across fibres — relevant to audio compression and loudness perception.