Ohm's Law and Masking
B. L. Cardozo · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1967
The harmonics in the spectrum of a periodic pulse train should, according to Ohm's law, be audible separately. When trying to check this one meets two difficulties in terms of subjective spectrum analysis. First, the nth harmonic may be masked in part or completely by other harmonics. Second, even if the nth harmonic is not masked completely, one has find it among a great many others. Makins use of “Schouten's artifice” (alternatively suppressing and reintroducing the nth harmonic), these difficulties can be lessened. Once the nth harmonic is heard, one may determine its masked threshold by attenuating it. Using the method of adjustment, three experienced subjects measured the masked thresholds of the lowest 10–25 harmonics of a 50, 100, 200, and 400 Hz periodic pulse train at 30 dB SL. From these measurements masking curves are derived. The slopes of these curves show reasonable agreement with those of earlier investigations. A feature of the present method is that one need not make use of noise and still is able to determine masking of closely adjacent frequencies. In varying the time interval, the experment also shed some light on the dynamics of masking.