Auditory masking: Need for improved conceptual structure

Durlach, N. I.

doi:10.1121/1.2335426

Cited by 61 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…This is an issue that is fundamental to the findings reported here but is not fully understood. There has been other evidence presented for a "multimasker penalty" in which adding a second masker is much more deleterious than might be anticipated based purely on the increase in masker energy ͑e.g., Yost et al, 1996;Bronkhorst, 2000;Freyman et al, 2004;Durlach, 2006;Iyer et al, 2009;Brungart et al, 2009͒. In those reports the multimasker penalty was greater when the two maskers were speech-especially highly similar speechthan other sounds ͑cf.…”

Section: Additional Masking or "Multimasker Penalty"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Stimulus factors influencing spatial release from speech-on-speech masking

Kidd

Mason

Best

et al. 2010

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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This study examined spatial release from masking ͑SRM͒ when a target talker was masked by competing talkers or by other types of sounds. The focus was on the role of interaural time differences ͑ITDs͒ and time-varying interaural level differences ͑ILDs͒ under conditions varying in the strength of informational masking ͑IM͒. In the first experiment, a target talker was masked by two other talkers that were either colocated with the target or were symmetrically spatially separated from the target with the stimuli presented through loudspeakers. The sounds were filtered into different frequency regions to restrict the available interaural cues. The largest SRM occurred for the broadband condition followed by a low-pass condition. However, even the highest frequency bandpass-filtered condition ͑3-6 kHz͒ yielded a significant SRM. In the second experiment the stimuli were presented via earphones. The listeners identified the speech of a target talker masked by one or two other talkers or noises when the maskers were colocated with the target or were perceptually separated by ITDs. The results revealed a complex pattern of masking in which the factors affecting performance in colocated and spatially separated conditions are to a large degree independent.

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Section: Additional Masking or "Multimasker Penalty"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Stimulus factors influencing spatial release from speech-on-speech masking

Kidd

Mason

Best

et al. 2010

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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“…4,6 On the other hand, introducing sound from water features in the urban environment may still reduce the loudness of road traffic noise 1 due to informational masking effects such as target-masker confusion. 7 However, it is not clear in which situation the addition of sounds also improves the overall soundscape quality. Next to this, most studies only considered the road traffic noise with small fluctuations in sound level, 1,3,5 which is not always realistic for urban environments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of natural sounds on the perception of road traffic noise

Coensel

Vanwetswinkel

Botteldooren

2011

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

150

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Recent studies show that introducing sound from water features in urban open spaces may reduce the loudness of road traffic noise, but it is not clear in which situations this measure also improves overall soundscape quality. This work describes a listening experiment on loudness, pleasantness, and eventfulness of stimuli that combine road traffic noise with fountain or bird sound at different sound levels. Adding fountain sound reduced the loudness of road traffic noise only if the latter had low temporal variability. Conversely, adding bird sound significantly enhanced soundscape pleasantness and eventfulness, more than what was achieved by adding fountain sound.

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“…Energetic masking arises from peripheral limitations, in particular the frequency selectivity of the cochlea. Informational masking arises from more central limitations and may be based on a completely different mechanism or set of mechanisms (see Durlach et al 2003;Durlach 2006, andKidd et al 2007, for reviews). Erviti et al (2011) hypothesized that contralateral enhancement reflects a release from informational masking only while ipsilateral enhancement can reflect a release from both energetic and informational masking.…”

Section: The Role Of Cuing In Enhancementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Auditory Enhancement of Increments in Spectral Amplitude Stems from More Than One Source

Carcagno

Semal

Demany

2012

JARO

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A component of a test sound consisting of simultaneous pure tones perceptually "pops out" if the test sound is preceded by a copy of itself with that component attenuated. Although this "enhancement" effect was initially thought to be purely monaural, it is also observable when the test sound and the precursor sound are presented contralaterally (i.e., to opposite ears). In experiment 1, we assessed the magnitude of ipsilateral and contralateral enhancement as a function of the time interval between the precursor and test sounds (10, 100, or 600 ms). The test sound, randomly transposed in frequency from trial to trial, was followed by a probe tone, either matched or mismatched in frequency to the test sound component which was the target of enhancement. Listeners' ability to discriminate matched probes from mismatched probes was taken as an index of enhancement magnitude. The results showed that enhancement decays more rapidly for ipsilateral than for contralateral precursors, suggesting that ipsilateral enhancement and contralateral enhancement stem from at least partly different sources. It could be hypothesized that, in experiment 1, contralateral precursors were effective only because they provided attentional cues about the target tone frequency. In experiment 2, this hypothesis was tested by presenting the probe tone before the precursor sound rather than after the test sound. Although the probe tone was then serving as a frequency cue, contralateral precursors were again found to produce enhancement. This indicates that contralateral enhancement cannot be explained by cuing alone and is a genuine sensory phenomenon.

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Auditory masking: Need for improved conceptual structure

Cited by 61 publications

References 26 publications

Stimulus factors influencing spatial release from speech-on-speech masking

Stimulus factors influencing spatial release from speech-on-speech masking

Effects of natural sounds on the perception of road traffic noise

Auditory Enhancement of Increments in Spectral Amplitude Stems from More Than One Source

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