MASTER: a Windows program for recording multiple auditory steady-state responses

MASTER is a Windows-based data acquisition system designed to assess human hearing by recording auditory steady-state responses. The system simultaneously generates multiple amplitude-modulated and/or frequency-modulated auditory stimuli, acquires electrophysiological responses to these stimuli, displays these responses in the frequency-domain, and determines whether or not the responses are significantly larger than background electroencephalographic activity. The operator can print out the results, store the data on disk for more extensive analysis by other programs, review stored data, and combine results. The system design follows clear principles concerning the generation of acoustic signals, the acquisition of artifact-free data, the analysis of electrophysiological responses in the frequency-domain, and the objective detection of signals in noise. The instrument uses a popular programming language (LabVIEW) and a commercial data acquisition board (AT-MIO-16E-10), both of which are available from National Instruments.