The ear becomes less nonlinear as sound levels rise

Evidence

The largest difference between the data expected from the regular cubic distortion and the measured data, is that the cancellation level eventually decreases with increasing levels of the lower primary. This decrement, for example in Fig. 14.4a with L2 = 60 dB and L1 larger than 65 dB, indicates that the hearing system acts less nonlinearly for higher input levels, i.e. indicating the existence of a distortion source that cannot be described by simple regular nonlinear characteristics. — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 1561

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• QUESTION: What mechanism explains reduced nonlinearity at high levels — possibly an automatic gain control or cochlear amplifier saturation that regular transfer functions can’t capture?

Related

• The hearing system becomes less nonlinear at higher input levels. (similarity 0.92)
• Hearing becomes less sensitive to frequency variations as level increases (similarity 0.87)
• The ear’s frequency response is level-dependent, favoring mid frequencies at low volume (similarity 0.86)
• Nonlinear distortion adds frequencies that were not in the original signal (similarity 0.85)
• Conductive losses act as filters but sensorineural losses add distortions beyond attenuation. (similarity 0.84)
• The ear’s sound-level-dependent nonlinearities cannot be substituted or corrected for (similarity 0.84)
• The ear’s just-noticeable amplitude difference depends on signal type, level, and frequency (similarity 0.84)
• Ear sensitivity depends jointly on frequency and on sound level (similarity 0.84)
• Cochlear frequency selectivity decreases as sound level increases (similarity 0.84)
• Loudspeakers at high power and low frequencies become highly nonlinear. (similarity 0.84)
• Raising noise level paradoxically worsens cut-off frequency discrimination as upper slopes flatten. (similarity 0.83)
• Low-pass noise cutoff discrimination degrades with level while high-pass cutoff does not (similarity 0.83)
• The ear’s frequency resolution worsens progressively at higher frequencies. (similarity 0.83)
• A minority of listeners show quadratic distortion that depends non-ideally on level and phase. (similarity 0.83)
• Difference noise generated by ear nonlinearities can be heard before the test tone itself (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Ear frequency response varies with amplitude, especially at low frequencies. #expands (0.80)
• The ear’s frequency response is level-dependent, favoring mid frequencies at low volume #corroborates (0.78)
• Difference noise generated by ear nonlinearities can be heard before the test tone itself #expands (0.75)