the human ear combines sounds of similar frequency into frequency bands, called 'critical bands'. Zwicker divided the audio spectrum into 24 critical bands and named the units Bark.

initially explained by American physicist Harvey Fletcher, the band of frequencies of a masking noise which are capable of hiding a sound of a chosen frequency. The critical bandwidth is measured in H [..]

A frequency region within which tones interact. There are many forms of such interaction, but the most common is masking where the sounds tend to obscure each other. A common way to define the critical band is the smallest distance beyond which masking no longer occurs. This distance corresponds to roughly 1 millimeter distance along the basilar me [..]