The concept of the critical band has driven the design and interpretation of psychophysical experiments for decades. The critical band was initially proposed by Fletcher [Rev. Mod. Phys. 12, 47 (1940)] to describe results of masking experiments, and it is generally interpreted as evidence for a filter that limits the signal-to-noise ratio in stimulus representations that are provided to the central nervous system. This filter-based interpretation of masked-detection thresholds has been extended and applied to numerous tasks, including many without masking. The concept of a bank of critical-band filters also forms the basis for signal-processing strategies used for hearing aids and cochlear implants. This talk will review both psychophysical and physiological results that challenge the concept of the critical-band filter. For example, the minimal effect of roving-level paradigms on masked-detection thresholds directly refutes the critical-band based power-spectrum model. Furthermore, most auditory neurons have receptive fields that are much broader than critical bands at the moderate to high sound levels used in most psychophysical tasks, with or without masking. Alternative concepts that are robust across a wide range of levels and in roving-level paradigms, such as fluctuation profiles, explain the original masked-detection results and related experiments, such as psychophysical tuning curves.