The intensitive DL of tones: dependence of signal/masker ratio on tone level and on spectrum of added noise.

In Greenwood [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 33, 484-502 (1961a)] the ratio of masked signal threshold to masker level (S/M) decreased about 4 dB at a masker level of about 50 dB SL, the 'transition' level, when noise bands were subcritical but not when supercritical. Schlauch et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 71, S73 (1982)] report a related result. A pilot study [Greenwood, Harvard Psychoacoustic Lab. Status Report 37, 8-9 (1961)] in which pure tones masked identical tones in-phase showed a larger change in S/M. Detailed tone-tone growth-of-masking curves from over a dozen subjects in 1967-69, and in 1960, are reported here. A transition in slope, of variable abruptness, often begins to occur at about 50 dB SL, dropping S/M ratio by 6 to 8 dB or more [Rabinowitz et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 35, 1053 (1976)]; the curves sometimes possess two segments, sometimes are simply convex. All have overall slopes less than 1.0, known also as the 'near miss'. Consistent with other results [Zwicker, Acustica 6, 365-396 (1956); Viemeister, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 51, 1265-1296 (1972); Moore and Raab, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 55, 1049-1060 (1974)], addition of low-level wide-band and high-pass noise was found to counteract the change in S/M, i.e., to raise the high-level section of the growth-of-masking curve. However, the ability of narrow 'band-pass' noise to exert this effect was greatest when added at a frequency ratio (band/masking-tone) of 1.3 to 1.5, which seems more closely to link the effects of added noise to the effects of increasing a masking band from sub- to supercritical width (above). Interpretation of the decrease in DL with level begins by noting that the 'transition' level correlates approximately with the level at which a primary unit population excited by a given pure tone begins rapidly to expand basally. Underlying this, the basalward shift of a tone's displacement envelope peak accelerates at about the same level [Rhode, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 49, 1218-1231 (1971); Sellick et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 72, 131-141 (1982)].(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)