Multisource listening is possibly enhanced by the background
Abstract
This work investigates the possibility of two regimes for background noise role in multisource or multisignal listening. In the first regime (low number of sources), the background noise is possibly constructive while in the other regime (high number of sources), the background noise is destructive, as is usually expected. The two regimes are separated by the optimal number of sources Nopt, where Nopt= 20 for mixing of delayed sources and Nopt = 10 for mixing of sources without delay. The existence of Nopt shows that the decrease in human listening performance in multisource conditions is possibly aided by the background noise in low number of sources.