Preliminary study of simultaneous-masking and pulsation-threshold patterns of vowels

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Abstract
Steady-state vowels were presented as maskers and pure tones as signals using simultaneous-masking (SM) and pulsation-threshold (PT) procedures. Extensive data were collected from 1 [human] subject. The method of adjustment was used to obtain vowel masking patterns: the display of signal thresholds as a function of frequency. For the Swedish vowels /y/, /e/, and /i/, the formant frequencies are usually reflected in both the SM and PT patterns, although the formants appear better preserved in the PT patterns. The masking patterns conform with the corresponding acoustic spectra in that the location of formant peaks depends on the vowel fundamental frequency. Vowel intensity was changed parametrically over a 45 dB range in 3 steps of 15 dB. For SM, each 15 dB change in vowel level results in about a 10 to 13 dB change in signal thresholds. For PT, the change in signal thresholds with vowel intensity is dramatically reduced: only a 3 to 4 dB threshold change in some instances for a 45 dB change in vowel intensity. Apparently, suppression plays an important role in the coding of speech spectra.

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