The perception of temporal gaps within periodic pulse patterns was examined in a forced‐choice test. The task of the listener was to identify which one of four pulse patterns contained a temporal gap. Extremely acute gap detection (in the region of 1–10 μsec) may be obtained with high pulse frequencies. Gap detection with high pulse frequencies is critically dependent upon the number of pulses; gap detection with low pulse frequencies is relatively independent of the pulse number. This result is consistent with the generalization, obtained in related studies, that extremely acute temporal discrimination is achieved at high pulse frequencies only with a large number of temporal samples, whereas the relatively poor temporal discrimination at low pulse frequencies is substantially less dependent upon the number of temporal samples. The temporal precision of the auditory system, in contrast with its precision of spectral analysis, appears to be insufficient to account for minimal gap thresholds.