A physiological ear model for specific loudness and masking

In a variety of applications the processing of arbitrary sound signals requires models for loudness perception or auditory masking with improved accuracy, compared to psychoacoustical models known so far. In general, perceptual models can only reach higher accuracy due to special assumptions concerning signal characteristics. The presented human ear model overcomes these restrictions because of the physiological modelling approach of sound processing in the ear, which is valid, independent from the signal characteristics. The results shown indicate that psychoacoustic observations in terms of loudness and masking are closely met. Additionally, the basilar membrane motion in the inner ear is obtained as intermediate quantity in accordance with physiological measurements, supporting the hypotheses about outer hair cell operation in the inner ear.