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🎚️ Psychoacoustic Masking Simulator

Interactive 3D frequency-spectrum scene where playing a loud masking tone near a quiet target tone shows how psychoacoustic masking hides sounds the ear should otherwise detect.

Acoustics2DModerate60 FPS

A loud masker tone and a quiet target tone are placed on a 3D frequency-versus-loudness spectrum. A purple masking-threshold ribbon, computed from a Bark-scale spreading function, shows exactly when the target tone's energy drops below what the ear can still detect.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

The masking threshold is not flat — it spreads asymmetrically around the masker frequency, reaching further upward than downward, because that's how the cochlea's critical-band filters overlap. Any tone whose spike falls under the shaded volume is inaudible.

🎮 How to Use

Move the masker and target frequency/level sliders and watch the threshold ribbon and the AUDIBLE/MASKED status update live. Press "Play tones" to hear both sines together through the Web Audio API.

💡 Did You Know?

MP3 and AAC encoders run essentially this same calculation thousands of times per second, discarding any frequency component predicted to be masked so the compressed file can be a fraction of the size with no audible difference.

⚙ Under the hood

Interactive 3D frequency-spectrum scene where playing a loud masking tone near a quiet target tone shows how psychoacoustic masking hides sounds the ear should otherwise detect.

psychoacoustic-maskingauditory-perceptionfrequency-maskingsound-perceptionaudio-compressionacoustics

2D · HTML5 Canvas 2D · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install