The Real Question; Is there any music above 11K hz worth hearing?.....................

[Cut-Throat]

I have been playing with a Tone Generator on my Laptop hooked to my Stereo, and my 58 year old ears stop at about 12 Khz. - I might be able to stretch it to 12.5khz, but frankly my light bulbs make more noise than that.

I have heard that teenagers set their ringtones on their cell phones at 17Kz, so that adults can't hear them. -- I am wondering if there is any 'worthwhile' music above 10Khz? - The upper notes of pianos are about 4 khz.

[Mallette]

Cymbals, amongst other things, are quite rich in upper freqs and harmonics. Snare drums, handclapping...when the highs aren't there clapping sounds like they are wearing gloves.

Yes, it's there. And, like you, my hearing isn't up there anymore, but for whatever reason things don't sound right when the high freqs aren't present. Like audio circuits themselves, measurements and what you actually hear are apparently not always absolutely in step.

Dave

[neo33]

Quite an interesting subject. I am 50 and my hearing stop at 18.5 KHz. I had my routine physical exam about 2 years ago including the ear test. And the doctor was quite surprise at my hearing test. Now, I am not sure what is the most accurate way for a hearing test to be conducted. But I have tried all kind of hearing tests on the internet and also with my tone generator and my ears will stop between 18 KHz and 18.5 KHz. I am not sure what to make of this as I thought that the older you get the less sensitive you are to high frequency.

I am quite sure there is worthwhile music above 10 KHz and it is nice to be able to listen at those upper frequency.

[Cut-Throat]

I am not sure what to make of this as I thought that the older you get the less sensitive you are to high frequency.

I am quite sure there is worthwhile music above 10 KHz and it is nice to be able to listen at those upper frequency.

I think I know what to make of this......I would like to administer the same test that I have been using today. I think it would be 'eye-opening' to you more than 'ear-opening'

Refer to the following chart and see if you can see a lot of music above 5khz even. Not to mention 10khz.

What do you think you're hearing above 18khz? - Crickets Masterbating?

[LarryC]

Refer to the following chart and see if you can see a lot of music above 5khz even. Not to mention 10khz.

Cut, if I'm not mistaken, those ranges are of the fundamentals of the lowest and highest notes those instruments can play. I don't believe those ranges would include overtones. The first overtone of, say, a 4,000-Hz note would be 8,000, the second would be 12,000 and the third would be 16,000. Things would be extremely dull and instrumental tones very homogenized without those overtones!

As an added comment, cymbals (as pointed out above) and triangles are two instruments with a very big high overtone load, and I'm pretty sure that their top Hz's go well above my hearing and yours. They are instruments of "indefinite pitch", so I believe those high tones are a mass of complexity that stress amps and cartridges to a high degree.

[Mallette]

>Quite an interesting subject. I am 50 and my hearing stop at 18.5 KHz.

That's the hearing of a teenager. Your are VERY lucky, indeed.

Larry, dead on. CutThroat, put an 18db/decade or so low pass filter in your system centered at 10k or so, and if you don't hear a massive difference you are wasteing a lot of time and money.

Like I said, my own hearing is seriously down from my teenage years of being able to hear out to 22k (I could hear dog whistles and "ultrasonic" burglar alarms), but for reasons I do not understand, I can still clearly experience the impact of these frequencies.

The human brain is not only queerer than we imagine, it is queerer than we CAN imagine.

Dave

[LarryC]

The human brain is not only queerer than we imagine, it is queerer than we CAN imagine.

Indeed, Dave. I don't have specialized knowledge, but it seems to me to be an ear-brain system, with high-speed computer-center ability in localizing sounds, focusing on wanted sounds in noisy, conflicting enviornments, and interpretively filling in blanks in imperfectly heard speech. I also believe lip-reading plays a greater role than most recognize. I'm deaf in one ear (Meniere's) plus below-average ability to lip-read, so I have extreme difficulty understanding conversations in noisy surroundings.

Oddly, my deaf ear still is very susceptible to sounds that my ear and brain can no longer "hear" and interpret. My tinnitus in that ear increases mightily in certain medium-noise settings, even though I can't specifically identify hearing anything in that ear. In other words, I have lots of tinnitus set off by noise in a deaf ear.

[neo33]

Cut-Throat, you have limited knowledge of musical instruments.

The range of human hearing spans roughly 20
Hz at the low end to 20,000 Hz at the high end.
That means your brain does not respond to
tones or overtones with frequencies lower than
20 Hz or higher than 20,000 Hz.

Of all the common acoustic musical instruments
in the world, the piano has the widest frequency
range. Its 88 keys span a range of 27.5 Hz to
4,186.0 Hz.

What do you hear when you plink that last,
highest key of the piano? You hear the
fundamental tone at 4,186 Hz, and your brain
also picks up and processes the first few
overtones. But only the first few.

Recall that overtone
frequencies are always whole-number multiples of the fundamental. So the first
overtone of the highest note on the piano has a frequency of 8,372 Hz. The
second overtone, 12,558 Hz. The third overtone, 16,744. Your brain probably does
not process the fourth overtone—it’s too high.

The highest key of the piano actually produces
dozens of overtones, but your brain does not
react to any of the ones with pitches higher than
about 20,000 Hz.

Suppose, by accident
or disease, your hearing became restricted to, say, 5,000 Hz at the high end.
Would you still be able to hear every note on the piano? Yes, you would. But the
instrument would sound muffled, lacking in treble. That’s because your brain
would not be able to process the rich array of overtones in the 5,000 to 20,000
Hz range.

I think I know what to make of this......I would like to administer the same test that I have been using today. I think it would be 'eye-opening' to you more than 'ear-opening'

Refer to the following chart and see if you can see a lot of music above 5khz even. Not to mention 10khz.

What do you think you're hearing above 18khz? - Crickets Masterbating?

[tigerwoodKhorns]

Interesting topic. I was at an audio show today and talking to a few guys about how bright so many of the systems sound (bad!). One person said that maybe the designers of many of these are old and therefore they sound good. Funny comment, may be true. I quickly left a room with a pair of $50,000 speakers with crazy expensive tube amps that sounded so bright they were just horrible.

[whatever55]

Refer to the following chart and see if you can see a lot of music above 5khz even. Not to mention 10khz.

Cut, if I'm not mistaken, those ranges are of the fundamentals of the lowest and highest notes those instruments can play. I don't believe those ranges would include overtones. The first overtone of, say, a 4,000-Hz note would be 8,000, the second would be 12,000 and the third would be 16,000. Things would be extremely dull and instrumental tones very homogenized without those overtones!

As an added comment, cymbals (as pointed out above) and triangles are two instruments with a very big high overtone load, and I'm pretty sure that their top Hz's go well above my hearing and yours. They are instruments of "indefinite pitch", so I believe those high tones are a mass of complexity that stress amps and cartridges to a high degree.

Didn't we get this same line of crap when they told us CD's are better..... sampling rate is good enough...

[Groomlakearea51]

One person said that maybe the designers of many of these are old and therefore they sound good.

You may be on to something....

The room in which the speakers were placed, and by consequence, the placement may also have had alot to do with how that system "sounded". Huhmm..? I wonder alot about that when fooling around in the "man cave". Some things just really sound, shall we say.... "different"...

[Don Richard]

Like I said, my own hearing is seriously down from my teenage years of being able to hear out to 22k (I could hear dog whistles and "ultrasonic" burglar alarms), but for reasons I do not understand, I can still clearly experience the impact of these frequencies.

You can't hear what you can't hear. But our psychoacoustic capabilities allow us to "fill in" missing information so that we hear what we expect to hear. This usually occurs when a system has bass response that ends above the fundamental frequency, but the fundamental is "heard" nonetheless. There are charts for the bass frequencies that show how strong a certain harmonic must be so that the fundamental tone is percieved..

[dougdrake]

What do you think you're hearing above 18khz? - Crickets Masterbating?

Since I'm over 50, and can only hear up to about 15k, who can describe this noise? I'd like to know what I'm missing.

[Invidiosulus]

I dated a cricket once.

Her crazy legs kept me up all night long.

[russ69]

I could be wrong but in some cases it's not that we can't hear some of the higher frequencies it's just that the level is really low. So it's more like the sound is recessed but it's not totally gone. I think?

Thanx, Russ

[jacksonbart]

I am 98 based on my last phyical exam I can hear up to 23.6 KHz. I hear everything. Now if the nurse would just keep her figure out of my @ss.

[jwwrs]

Now if the nurse would just keep her figure out of my @ss.

How's the healing going?

[runninshine]

Interesting topic. I was at an audio show today and talking to a few guys about how bright so many of the systems sound (bad!). One person said that maybe the designers of many of these are old and therefore they sound good. Funny comment, may be true. I quickly left a room with a pair of $50,000 speakers with crazy expensive tube amps that sounded so bright they were just horrible.

Is that the CES event you were at?

[neo33]

Hey jackson, go pick on someone your own size and weight!

I am 98 based on my last phyical exam I can hear up to 23.6 KHz. I hear everything. Now if the nurse would just keep her figure out of my @ss.

[99PanozAIV]

I recently downloaded Senses iPod app and have used it several times with my AKG K340 headphones on a Cute Beyond headphone amplifier. My hearing's shot above 8,000 hz. By shot I mean down at least 30 db from the other tones I can clearly hear. However, as someone mentioned earlier, I can still appreciate a lot of the differences between speakers. But as I've gotten older, I do find I've migrated towards increasingly bright, clear speakers. I'm 61 BTW and used to shoot competitively indoors (yep, always wore hearing protection too) and played in a rock band for about a year. If you have an iPod, it's a very affordable little app and fun to play with. Several of my friends have tried it (can't believe they can hear those tones and I can't).