Male tree crickets produce advertisememt calls that are essential for mating success. Perception of this sound involves the capture of sound waves by an eardrum and mechanoreception of vibrations by sensory cells within the ear. To aid the detection of courtship calls present at low levels in noisy environments, tree crickets use active amplification within the ear. However, this sensitive system may be overwhelmed when noise is loud or similar in frequency to the call of interest. In this study, we performed a series of experiments to determine how and whether a tree cricket Oecanthus nigricornis eardrum is able to represent a call of interest in the presence of a simulated chorus of distracting calls at varying sound pressure levels and frequencies. Because anthropogenic noise has also been shown to impact the ability for many animals to acoustically communicate, we also performed experiments with white and pink noise as a distracting signal to simulate noise regimes generated by humans. This work provides insight on the mechanical functioning of cricket ears, and also on how these animals may be affected by different ecological conditions, including those generated by humans.