It has long been known that static pressure affects middle-ear function and conventional tympanometry uses variations in static pressure for clinical assessment of the middle ear. Middle-ear under-pressures tend to reduce the velocity magnitude more than do middle-ear over pressures.
The effect of middle-ear static pressure on the acoustic response of both structures is similar in that non-zero middle-ear static pressures generally reduce the velocity magnitude of the two membrane components in response to sound stimuli.
