In underwater target detection, the bottom reverberation has some of the same properties as the target echo, which has a great impact on the performance. It is essential to study the difference between target echo and reverberation. In this paper based on the unique advantage of human listening ability on objects distinction, the Gammatone filter is taken as the auditory model. In addition, time-frequency perception features and auditory spectra features are extracted for active sonar target echo and bottom reverberation separation. The features of the experimental data have good concentration characteristics in the same class and have a large amount of differences between different classes, which shows that this method can effectively distinguish between the target echo and reverberation. In underwater target detection, the bottom reverberation has some of the same properties as the target echo, which has a great impact on the performance. It is essential to study the difference between target echo and reverberation. In this paper based on the unique advantage of human listening ability on objects distinction, the Gammatone filter is taken as the auditory model. In addition, time-frequency perception features and auditory spectra features are extracted for active sonar target echo and bottom reverberation separation. The features of the experimental data have good concentration characteristics in the same class and have a large amount of differences between different classes, which shows that this method can effectively distinguish between the target echo and reverberation.