Further Results on Binaural Unmasking and the EC Model. II. Noise Bandwidth and Interaural Phase

Abstract

Data are presented on binaural unmasking of tones masked by noise as a function of the interaural phases of the tone and noise and the bandwidth of the noise. It is found that (1) for a tone of 250 Hz, the binaural unmasking increases by 10 dB as the bandwidth is reduced from 250 Hz to 4.2 Hz; (2) the functional form of the dependence on interaural phase is independent of bandwidth; (3) reducing the bandwidth increases the amount of unmasking at all frequencies; (4) previous versions of the EC model are inadequate for describing the results; and (5) the data can be described by assuming that the error factor k in the EC model depends on the bandwidth W and interaural phase θn of the noise according to a relation of the form k = 1 + K1(W)K2(φn).