An attempt is made to define some limiting conditions for an auditory short‐term memory relatively uncontaminated by verbal encoding or by identification of specific signals. In a one‐interval test, randomly selected, interval‐coded pulse patterns were either repeated exactly after an occurrence of a temporal gap, or were followed by independent randomly selected patterns. Accuracy of identification of repeated patterns is crucially dependent upon the duration of the temporal gap, upon the duration of the auditory pattern, and upon the number of successive representations of the patterns. The optimal temporal gap—about 0.5 sec—is relatively independent of the average interpulse interval, as is the optimal pattern duration—about 64 msec or 8 interpulse intervals.