Two- versus four-tone masking, revisited

Canahl [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 50, 471-474 (1971)] measured thresholds for a 1.0-kHz sinusoid masked either by two or by four surrounding tones. He reported four-tone masked thresholds that exceeded, by 5-7.5 dB, the energy sum of the masking produced by the individual tone pairs. The present paper reports on a series of experiments investigating the effects of several factors on this 5-7.5 dB "excess" masking. In each experiment, thresholds for a 1.0-kHz 250-ms sinusoid were measured as a function of the overall level of two or four equal amplitude sinusoids with frequencies arithmetically centered around 1.0 kHz. For conditions similar to those of the Canahl experiment, 5-6 dB of excess masking was obtained independent of the level of the masking tones. Randomly varying overall level across presentations had no effect on the excess masking. The excess masking was reduced or eliminated when the masking tones were generated using an amplitude modulation technique, when they were gated on and off with the signal, or when their waveshapes were fixed across trials. Canahl's result may reflect listeners' ability to detect the signal as a change in the waveshape of the multitone masker.     

A power-law transformation predicting masking by sounds with complex spectra

In a previous paper [R. Lutfi, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 73, 262-267 (1983)], the following rule was proposed for predicting masking by pairs of simultaneous maskers; Xab = [XPa + XPb]1/P, where in units of power, Xa and Xb are the individual masking effects of the maskers, Xab is the combined effect, and 0.20 less than or equal to p less than or equal to 0.33. In this paper, the rule is used to predict the results of studies in the literature that have measured masking by sounds with various other complex spectra. In most of these studies, the individual maskers comprising the complex have nominally nonoverlapping power spectra. A single value of p = 0.33 yields predictions in good agreement with the data of these studies. For a study in which the component maskers overlap more appreciably, a larger value of p = 0.50 produces equally accurate predictions. The rule also predicts some general features of the results of studies in which the individual effects of the maskers in the complex are not known but can be estimated. It is suggested that the general applicability of the rule reflects a conjoint analysis by the auditory system of two or more waveform statistics.     

Effects of informational maskers within and across trials

The across-trial effect of maskers in conditions of informational masking was evaluated from performance on occasional trials in which the signal was presented alone. For 6 of 12 listeners participating in the study, a significant number of errors were obtained on signal-alone trials; in some cases equivalent to that signal+ masker trials. On immediately preceding trial blocks for which there were no intervening maskers, performance for these signals was perfect. The results indicate that informational maskers can have a significant effect on signal threshold, both within and across trials.     

Classification and identification of recorded and synthesized impact sounds by practiced listeners, musicians, and nonmusicians

Three experiments were conducted to test the viability of a low-parameter modal model for synthesizing impact sounds to be used in commercial and psychoacoustic research. The model was constrained to have four physically based parameters dictating the amplitude, frequency, and decay of modes. The values of these parameters were selected by ear to roughly match the recordings of ten different resonant objects suspended by hand and struck with different mallets. In experiment 1, neither 35 professional musicians nor 187 college undergraduates could identify which of the two matched sounds was the real recording with better than chance accuracy, though significantly better than chance performance was obtained when modal parameters were selected without the previously imposed physical constraints. In experiment 2, the undergraduates identified the source corresponding to the recorded and synthesized sounds with the same level of accuracy and largely the same pattern of errors. Finally, experiment 3 showed highly practiced listeners to be largely insensitive to changes in the acoustic waveform resulting from an increase in the number of free parameters used in the modal model beyond 3. The results suggest that low-parameter, modal models might be exploited meaningfully in many commercial and research applications involving human perception of impact sounds.     

Effect of masker harmonicity on informational masking

Detection thresholds for a tone in an unfamiliar tonal pattern can be greatly elevated under conditions of masker uncertainty [Neff and Green, Percept. Psychophys. 41, 409-415 (1987); Oh and Lutfi, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 101, 3148 (1997)]. The present experiment was undertaken to determine whether harmonicity of masker tones can reduce the detrimental effect of masker uncertainty. Inharmonic maskers were comprised of m=2-49 frequency components selected at random on each presentation within 100-10000 Hz, excluding frequencies between 920-1080. Harmonic maskers were comprised of frequency components selected at random within this same range, but constrained to have a fundamental frequency of 200 Hz. For inharmonic maskers the signal was a 1000-Hz tone. For harmonic-maskers the signal was a tone whose frequency was either harmonically (1000 Hz) or inharmonically (1047 Hz) related to the masker. In all conditions the amount of masking was greatest for m = 20-40 components. At this point, harmonic maskers with harmonic signal produced an average of 9-12 dB less masking than inharmonic maskers. Harmonic maskers with inharmonic signal produced an average of 16-20 dB less masking.     

Effect of decision weights and internal noise on the growth of d' with N

A general finding of psychoacoustic studies is that detectability d' of a noisy signal grows less than optimally with the number N of independent observations of the signal. Competing accounts implicate internal noise common to all observations or nonoptimal decision weights given to observations. A discriminant analysis of listeners' trial-by-trial responses in a multitone level-discrimination task favored the latter account.     

Negative plasma potential in unmagnetized DC electropositive plasma with conducting walls

Negative plasma potentials were obtained in DC hot filament unmagnetized electropositive argon plasma for sufficiently low neutral pressure. Double layers provide ion and electron confinement near the walls. The potential profiles from the center of the plasma to the potential minima are quite similar in shape to those observed when the plasma has positive plasma potentials. The primary electrons emitted from the filaments are important for charge conservation and for modification of the Bohm criteria but are not important for current balance.