The masking of a frontal signal by spatially wide noise sources was investigated in a listening experiment. The noise sources consisted of a single or multiple symmetrically positioned loudspeakers in the frontal horizontal plane in anechoic conditions. It is shown that the detection threshold of the signal does not depend on masker width, which suggests that frontal unmasking does not exist in loudspeaker listening. In additional tests with signal source positioned in side it is shown that moderately small binaural unmasking occurs in that case from wide masker, and that increasing the width of masker source decreases binaural unmasking effect.

Authors: Ahonen, Jukka; Pulkki, Ville
Affiliation: Helsinki University of Technology
AES Convention: 124 (May 2008) Paper Number: 7461
Publication Date: May 1, 2008
Subject: Psychoacoustics, Perception, and Listening Tests

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