Widened critical bands make it harder to separate components of complex sounds like speech

Evidence

Discrimination of sounds does start with the ability to detect the sounds, but it also requires appropriate sound processing to be available. For example, if the critical bands (see Section 2.2) are widened, they are less able to separate the components of complex sounds—the most important to us being speech. In order to test hearing discrimination, speech audiometry is employed that makes use of spoken material. — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 2369

Categorization

• XREF: Links straight back to the critical band concept from Section 2.2, the chapter’s core psychoacoustic mechanism.