The perceptual tone/noise ratio of merged iterated rippled noises

Abstract

Iterated rippled noise (IRN) is constructed by delaying a random noise by d ms, adding it back to the same noise, and repeating the process iteratively. When two IRNs with the same power but slightly different delays are added together, the perceptual tone/noise ratio of the "merged" IRN is markedly reduced with respect to that of either of the component IRNs. In this paper, the reduction in the perceptual tone/noise ratio is measured for IRNs in which one of the delays is always 16 ms and the other is either 16 +/- 0.1 ms or 16 +/- 1.1 ms. The component IRNs have the same number of iterations, and the number varies across conditions from 4 to 256. The perceptual tone/noise ratio is measured using a discrimination matching procedure developed for single IRNs; each merged IRN is compared with a range of "standard" stimuli having varying proportions of a complex tone and a broadband noise [Patterson et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 100, 3286-3294 (1996)]. For single IRNs, the function relating the signal-to-noise ratio of the matching standard to the number of iterations in the IRN was found to be essentially straight. This relationship was explained in terms of the height of the first peak in the autocorrelation of the stimulus wave, or by the first peak in the summary autocorrelogram produced by a time-domain auditory model. For the merged IRNs in the current experiment, the matching-point functions are found to have pronounced downward curvature, in addition to being well below the function for single IRNs. To account for the reduction in the perceptual tone/noise ratio of merged IRNs, the autocorrelation model was extended to include a simple rule for combining adjacent peaks in the autocorrelation function of the wave, and the autocorrelogram model was revised to improve the simulation of the "loss of phase locking" at higher frequencies in the autocorrelogram.