The effect of stimulus bandwidth on binaural loudness summation.

Abstract

Binaural loudness summation is an important property of the human auditory system. This paper presents an experimental investigation of how binaural loudness summation varies with stimulus bandwidth. Loudness matches were obtained between dichotic stimuli, with interaural level differences (ILDs) of 2-12 dB, and diotic stimuli. The stimuli were noise bands with seven center frequencies and four bandwidths. Results showed that the loudness of dichotic stimuli increased nonlinearly with ILD, the increase being slightly less with broader bandwidths. There was a bandwidth-dependent difference between the listening tests results and the predictions of Moore and Glasberg's [(2007) J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 121, 1604-1612] loudness model. The size of the difference was, however, small. A characteristic function was derived describing how overall loudness depends on stimulus bandwidth and ILD.