Phase effects in masking related to dispersion in the inner ear.

Phase effects in masking experiments using multi-tone maskers are usually associated with strong variations in the masker envelope. In this article we describe psychoaccoustic experiments with such maskers that lead to phase-dependent threshold variations of up to 20 dB, although the phase transformation leaves the envelope unchanged. However, after filtering the maskers with a realistic basilar membrane model, the envelopes are different owing to the models phase-dispersive properties. Comparison of model outputs with the experimental results reveals a strong correlation between the two for a wide range of parameters, provided one makes the additional assumption that the ear has a minimum integration time of a few milliseconds.