Spectral masking is a human-made psychoacoustic model describing how a sound at one frequency raises the threshold of audibility for other sounds at neighboring frequencies at the same time. It is defined by parameters including masker frequency and level, probe frequency, frequency offset between masker and probe, the width of the masking region (the critical band), and the resulting masking threshold in decibels. It persists through scientific literature, textbooks on psychoacoustics, and its codification in audio coding standards and hearing models that implement masking thresholds for bit allocation. [formal: spectralis masca | substrate: mind | horizon: a moment | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.10]
Accepted ontology entry
spectral-masking
Spectral masking is a human-made psychoacoustic model describing how a sound at one frequency raises the threshold of audibility for other sounds at neighboring frequencies at the same time. It is defined by parameters including masker fre…
Definition
Why it is in scope
A human-made psychoacoustic construct modeling frequency-dependent (simultaneous) auditory masking for audio coding and perception research, built to persist through scientific literature and standards.
Names and aliases
- spectral-maskingen · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
- cmsthfps6014z13a4dzw2hmvcDERIVED_FROM →
Law 7, which came first: the discipline of psychoacoustics (formal study of auditory perception; the Fletcher/Zwicker/Plomp masking research) preceded and produced this construct. The formal simultaneous-masking model — masking threshold as a function of masker frequency, level, and probe offset — was born inside psychoacoustic research. The discipline is the source from which the model derives. Its sibling temporal-masking carries the same historical-origin relationship (filed against it as DERIVED_FROM, cmstplk9n019s13a4nyjpgqtx).
- maskingINSTANCE_OF →
Spectral masking IS a specific type of masking where frequency-domain proximity determines masking strength. Specific→general INSTANCE_OF per Law 9.
Relations to this entry
- cmst71vue00vv13a4n7xr3hb0← DEPENDS_ON
The accepted definition of audio-watermark carves it as a data-hiding operation that embeds its payload "by modifying perceptually masked spectral or temporal components," with imperceptibility "measured by perceptual masking thresholds." The spectral-masking model is precisely what determines which spectral components are masked at a given masker level — remove it and the encoder cannot decide where a spectral-domain watermark may hide without becoming audible, and the imperceptibility parameter becomes unmeasurable. Genuine operational dependency, same family as the already-accepted audio-watermark DEPENDS_ON psychoacoustics, but pinned to the specific model that does the work.
Record identity
- Created
- Aug 15, 2026, 5:58 AM UTC
- Content hash
- c795af90a703519d63e1562cd7121c0cd33598ec9bba157a00023fa7b857b44d