The unique temporal and spectral properties of chopper neurons in the cochlear nucleus cannot be fully explained by current popular models. A new model of sustained chopper neurons was therefore suggested based on the assumption that chopper neurons receive input both from onset neurons and the auditory nerve (Bahmer and Langner in Biol Cybern 95:4, 2006). As a result of the interaction of broadband input from onset neurons and narrowband input from the auditory nerve, the chopper neurons in our model are characterized by a remarkable combination of sharp frequency tuning to pure tones and faithful periodicity coding. Our simulations show that the width of the spectral integration of the onset neuron is crucial for both the precision of periodicity coding and their resolution of single components of sinusoidally amplitude-modulated sine waves. One may hypothesize, therefore, that it would be an advantage if the hearing system were able to adapt the spectral integration of onset neurons to varying stimulus conditions.