A psychoacoustic model for the noise masking of voiceless plosive bursts

Abstract

A model for predicting the masked thresholds of the voiceless plosive bursts /k,t,p/ in background noise is proposed. Because plosive bursts are brief, are generated by a noise source, and have different spectral characteristics, the modeling approach must account for duration, center frequency, signal bandwidth and type. To achieve this goal, noise-in-noise masking experiments are conducted using a broad band masker and bandpass noise signals of varying bandwidth (1-8 CB), duration (10-300 ms), and center frequency (0.4-4 kHz). The results of these experiments are used to parameterize an auditory filter model in which the effective bandwidths of the filters and the signal-to-noise ratio at threshold are frequency and duration-dependent. The duration dependent filter model is then used to predict the thresholds of both synthetic and naturally-spoken plosive bursts in background noise.