Abstract
The lateralization of tone complexes presented against a diotic band-pass noise background was measured as a function of level and Interaural Time Difference (ITD) of the tone complex. The bandwidths of the sine-phase tone complex and the noise were 600 Hz, centered at 550 Hz, the component spacing of the tones was 20 Hz. Due to this spectral configuration, none of the tonal components is spectrally resolved, and the binaural cues of the combined stimulus vary with the 20 Hz cycle of the stimulus. Results show that listeners can judge the lateral position of the tone complex down to levels of −5 dB SNR. A second experiment determined masked thresholds of the tone complex in the diotic noise as a function of ITD. Detection thresholds are as low as −20 dB SNR for ITDs of 0.7 ms, and about −7 dB for ITDs of 0 ms, a condition in which only monaural information could be used by the listeners. It seems that despite the audibility of the tone complex at rather low levels (−20 dB SNR) based on binaural cues, the ability to lateralize requires the audibility of monaural envelope information, which is restricted to levels above about −7 dB SNR. Thus, monaural envelope information may be a prerequisite for the readout of lateralization information corresponding to the tone complex from the binaural display.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Bernstein LR, Trahiotis C, Akeroyd MA, Hartung K (2001) Sensitivity to brief changes of interaural time and interaural intensity. J Acoust Soc Am 109:1604–1615
Grantham DW, Wightman FL (1978) Detectability of varying interaural temporal differences. J Acoust Soc Am 63:511–523
Hirsh IJ (1948) The influence of interaural phase on interaural summation and inhibition. J Acoust Soc Am 20:11–19
Lorenzi C, Gatehouse S, Lever C (1999) Sound localization in noise in normal-hearing listeners. J Acoust Soc Am 105:1810–1820
Schimmel O, van de Par S, Kohlrausch A, Breebaart J (2008) Sound segregation based on temporal envelope structure and binaural cues. J Acoust Soc Am 124:1130–1145
van de Par S, Kohlrausch A, Breebaart J, McKinney M (2004) Discrimination of different temporal envelope structures of diotic and dichotic target signals within diotic wide-band noise. In: Pressnitzer D, de Cheveigné A, McAdams S, Collet L (eds) Auditory signal processing: physiology, psychoacoustics, and models. Springer, New York
van de Par S, Schimmel O, Kohlrausch A, Breebaart J (2007a) Source segregation based on temporal envelope structure and binaural cues. In: Kollmeier B, Klump G, Hohmann V, Langemann U, Mauermann M, Uppenkamp S, Verhey J (eds) Hearing - from basic research to applications. Springer, Heidelberg
van de Par S, Kohlrausch A, Schimmel O (2007b) A comparison of detection of lateralization of interaurally time-delayed signals in the presence of diotic masking noise. In: Calvo-Manzano A, Pérez-Lopéz A (eds) Proceedings of the 19th international Congress on acoustics, ICA’07, Madrid, Spain, 6 p
Yost WA (1981) Lateralization position of sinusoids presented with interaural intensive and temporal differences. J Acoust Soc Am 70:397–409
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this paper
Cite this paper
van de Par, S., Kohlrausch, A., Le Goff, N. (2010). Lateralization of Tone Complexes in Noise: The Role of Monaural Envelope Processing in Binaural Hearing. In: Lopez-Poveda, E., Palmer, A., Meddis, R. (eds) The Neurophysiological Bases of Auditory Perception. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-5686-6_30
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-5686-6_30
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-5685-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-5686-6
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)