Absolute and thermal noise masked pure tone thresholds were obtained for 3666 people at the 1948 San Diego County Fair. For groups having equal absolute hearing losses, slightly greater masked losses were found for the older age groups (over 40), females, and individuals who had not worked in noise, had not had musical training, and who were aware of hearing difficulty. It was further found that those with predominantly low frequency losses had greater masked losses than those with predominantly high frequency losses. Ratios of the intensity of the tones to intensity per cycle of the masking noise were obtained for masked thresholds of people whose corresponding absolute thresholds varied over a seventy‐db range. These ratios are plotted as a function of absolute hearing loss.