Frequency Range of Compression for Discrimination of Acoustic Signals with Complex Spectra

Psychophysical experiments on listeners with normal hearing were conducted to discriminate the rippled spectra of an acoustic signal against maskers with different positions of the spectral band relative to the signal band. As the signal level changed from 50 to 80 dB SPL, the on-frequency masker level changed by 29 dB, whereas the low-frequency masker level (the position of the center of the spectral band was from –1.25 to –1 octave relative to the signal) changed by 8.7–9.8 dB. These results are interpreted as 0.3 dB/dB compression of responses to the signal and no compression of the effect of low-frequency maskers. If the spectral bands of the signal and masker partially overlap, discrimination of the spectral structure occurs predominantly in the part of the spectrum that does not overlap the masker spectrum and is subjected to low-frequency masking that is not compressed.