Consistent lateralization judgement can be obtained with interaural delays in the envelope but not in the carrier of high‐frequency sinusoidal signals that are amplitude modulated. At low frequencies the situation is reversed and delays in the carrier, but not the envelope, can be detected. Delays in quasi‐frequency‐modulated or frequency‐modulated waveforms allow lateralization by some observers but require much larger delays for performance as good as that obtained with amplitude‐modulated signals. The implications of some of these observations for models of the envelope extraction process are discussed.