In studies on the distractor-induced blindness/deafness paradigm, an inhibitory process of selective attention was observed when distractors exhibited characteristics similar to those of the subsequent target, resulting in a reduced detection rate. While previous studies have focused on frequency differences for auditory stimuli, the present study considers the effects of duration differences. In two blocks, participants were required to detect either relatively short tones with a duration of 50 ms embedded within a context of longer tones with a duration of 100 ms, or relatively long tones with a duration of 100 ms embedded within a context of shorter tones with a duration of 50 ms, when presented with a visual cue. Tones of the same duration as the target stimulus served as distractors. The number of distractors varied between six, three, and zero across trials. The results demonstrate that the detection rate declines significantly as the number of distractors increases, with a more pronounced effect observed for short tones. Surprisingly, the observed phenomenon is contingent on the sequence of test conditions. Specifically, a more pronounced reduction in the detection rate for short tones occurs when long tones were to be detected first, whereas the detection of long tones is enhanced when short tones were to be observed first.