Perceptual sensitivity to high-frequency interaural time differences created by rustling sounds

Abstract

Interaural time differences (ITDs) can be used to localize sounds in the horizontal plane. ITDs can be extracted from either the fine structure of low-frequency sounds or from the envelopes of high-frequency sounds. Studies of the latter have included stimuli with periodic envelopes like amplitude-modulated tones or transposed stimuli, and high-pass filtered Gaussian noises. Here, four experiments are presented investigating the perceptual relevance of ITD cues in synthetic and recorded "rustling" sounds. Both share the broad long-term power spectrum with Gaussian noise but provide more pronounced envelope fluctuations than Gaussian noise, quantified by an increased waveform fourthmoment,W. The current data show that the JNDs in ITD for band-pass rustling sounds tended to improve with increasing Wand with increasing bandwidth when the sounds were band limited. In contrast, no influence of W on JND was observed for broadband sounds, apparently because of listeners' sensitivity to ITD in low-frequency fine structure, present in the broadbandsounds. Second, it is shown that for high-frequency rustling sounds ITD JNDs can be as low as 30 μs. The third result was that the amount of dominance for ITDextraction of low frequencies decreases systematically with increasing amount of envelope fluctuations. Finally, it is shown that despite the exceptionally good envelope ITD sensitivity evident with high-frequency rustling sounds, minimum audible angles of both synthetic and recorded high-frequency rustling sounds in virtual acoustic space are still best when the angular informationis mediated by interaural level differences. © 2011 Association for Research in Otolaryngology.