Multistate information was encoded within the temporal microstructure of multivariate auditory displays. Excellent discrimination of a two‐dimensional constraint between interpulse interval and pulse amplitude is achieved with 2 to 16 states per variable, but only if other display variables are fixed and the range of the controlled variables is relatively large. Under most of the conditions examined, discrimination of informational constraints within multivariate displays suffers as the number of encoded states is increased beyond two.Subject Classification :[43]65.75, [43]65.52, [43]65.22.