Masking and pitch shift of tone bursts and clicks by low-frequency tones.

Abstract From experiments in animals and investigations in humans it is known that the normally phase-dependent masking of a short stimulus by a low-frequency continuous tone does not occur in the case of endolymphatic hydrops. The recording of the masked threshold of short tone stimuli in a loud tone of 30 Hz is to be evaluated for the clinical diagnostics of Meniere's disease. To this purpose, the main parameters of the measurement (type, frequency, duration of the stimulus, and intensity of the masker) and their effect on phase-dependent masking and pitch-shift are investigated. Stimuli above 2 kHz are masked less than those of lower frequencies. Wide-band stimuli are less useful, since only the low-frequency component of their spectrum is masked. The tone stimuli should be short (1 – 2 ms) in order to make the measurement of the phase dependence more accurate. With increasing masker level the masking at phase 0° corresponds to the increase in level, at phase 270° the amount is twice as much. The pitch shift which is perceived in low-tone masking depends on the phase of the stimulus, and on the levels of the stimulus and the masking tone. The use of brain stem recordings in the investigation of phase-dependent low tone masking is problematic since well-synchronizing stimuli with high frequency spectral components are masked poorly.