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

[wuzzzer]

I don't know how accurate a compressed music file played on an iPod will be for doing a hearing test.

[Mallette]

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..

You are getting all scientific again. Our science is really very primitive. Yes, I CAN hear what I can't hear. Feel free to measure my hearing and say "You can't hear that." But also then explain when it isn't there and I say it isn't there.

It's my belief that when upper harmonics are not reproduced it affects the lower ones. Just a theory, but there has to be an explanation as to why when filters are applied that affect only things I cannot hear I immediately and clearly hear the impact.

Given I did these experiments myself I have a hard time ignoring them.

>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.

Where'd you come up with that? I heard sounds out to 23k when I was 22. You can't imagine 23k at 140db. Seriously painful as first experienced by inadvertantly walking under an "ultrasonic" burglar alarm in a museum. The guard estimated that about a person or two per year had the same very painful experience. They never turned it off...just disable the annunciator during open hours.

Happened a few times after that before my hearing started to "age," in banks and such.

Dave

[neo33]

I burned a continuous 20KHz test tone .wav version into a cd and listened to it on my 2-Channel system at 100% volume and I can actually hear it. This lead me to believe that at normal volume, the tone is there but at a very low level. So at a younger age you can here that low-level tone at normal volume but as you get older and older you can't hear it anymore. I tried the above method with test tone starting at 18.5 up to 20KHz (these are the frequencies that I can't hear at normal volume) and I can hear every single one of them (though I am not sure if they mean anything).

[neo33]

You must be smoking weed at that time. The human brain cannot process frequency higher then 20KHz.

Where'd you come up with that? I heard sounds out to 23k when I was 22. You can't imagine 23k at 140db. Seriously painful as first experienced by inadvertantly walking under an "ultrasonic" burglar alarm in a museum. The guard estimated that about a person or two per year had the same very painful experience. They never turned it off...just disable the annunciator during open hours.

Happened a few times after that before my hearing started to "age," in banks and such.

Dave

[Mallette]

My understanding from an Army doctor I queried about it at the time was that about 1 in a thousand can hear frequencies above 20k in their younger years. Not sure where you are gettin your "brick wall" figures from, but I am unaware of any "absolutes" in human genetics or sensory abilities.

My first experience with ultrasonics was with a "silent" dog whistly I purchased at about 14 or so. I thought it was either a ripoff or defective as I could hear it quite clearly. Didn't occur to me that I was hearing something others were not...since I couldn't change places with them. A couple of my friends said they weren't hearing anything, but I thought they were just pulling my leg.

I can tell you those "ultrasonic" alarms were painfully loud, like icepicks in the ears. I learned to spot them visually in likely places like banks and walk around them. Their beams were extremely focused. I can't say "all," as I didn't care to sample them all, but my understanding was that they mostly never turned them off, since they were not audible to the vast majority, but simply disabled the alarms.

That was my experience, you may believe as you wish.

Dave

[fini]

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

Ah, yes, one of Buddy Holly's earliest HiFi recordings. Really gave your tweeters a workout.

[ZAKO]

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.

The fundamentals are below 5000 hz Harmonics are above 5000hz,,

[Pete H]

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

That's just Fu@#*^% Funny, I don't care who you are.[Y]

[Pete H]

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"...

Then you should stop fooling around in the man cave, it leaves stains.[<)]

[neo33]

You're right. There are a very few number of people in their youth years that can hear frequencies above 20 KHertzs. However, they are "subconsiously hearing" those frequencies. That is why the ultrasonic alarms were "painfully loud" to their hearing. They are experiencing more "pain" in their ear rather than hearing the sound.

My understanding from an Army doctor I queried about it at the time was that about 1 in a thousand can hear frequencies above 20k in their younger years.

[Mallette]

The dog whistle wasn't painful, just very high. The burglar alarms were (as I found out) 140db. Friends, that's painful at any frequency.

Dave

[Invidiosulus]

I haven't taken a hearing test in a while.

I worry a little about all the firearms and power tools although I always wear hearing protection.

-Josh

[Ricci]

The 20-20khz spec often touted around as the limits of human hearing is an average. A ballpark figure nothing more. There are people that can hear well past 20khz and also below 20hz. Just as there are people who are over 8ft tall, can run over 25mph and others who can bench more than >500lbs. None of those things would be considered average, but it does not mean it doesn't happen.

Also consider the fact that your hearing does not operate like a brick wall. It's more akin to the way a crossover works with a sloping off of the response to frequencies. It doesn't mean that you cannot hear 18khz necessarily, just that you are much less sensitive to it and need an increased level for it to be noticeable. The same happens at low freq's. I can personally hear down to about 15 or 16hz fairly easily provided that there is a decent level. Perception is another thing. You can percieve or experience very low powerful bass in a tactile sense even if it is below audibility. I'm not so sure about the upper registers with their tiny wavelengths, but I wouldn't be surprised.

[USNRET]

what did you say, I've been listening to this for way too long:

F119 engine for F/A-22 Raptor showing the 2 extreme vectoring cases

[mark1101]

In a hearing test you may not be able to hear the test tones past a certain point.

But when you hear music try disconecting your tweeter. You will immediately notice. Just like you can usually easily notice the difference between a modern super tweeter (CT-125) and an old K77. Hard to explain, but when the music is missing......you notice.

[maxg]

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.

Larry my dear friend - we have something else in common it appears.

I sailed off to my last hearing test just after getting my ears cleaned out (best audiophile upgrade you can do whatever they say). I had been hoping that clearing the wax would stop my tinnitus - it does happen just sadly not for me.

I have tinnitus in both ears but worse in my left. It does vary quite dramatically from being unnoticable to being extremely bothersome.

Anyway at the test I discovered that I now have 50% hearing loss over 8 KHz in my left ear. The right is fine - currently - but my ENT guy thinks the whole thing might worsen considerably in the coming 5 to 10 years. I have a feeling there is a genetic element to this as my mother's hearing now doesn't cover the full range to 5 KHz.

In the meantime I am very interested in your observations in terms of the variation of your Tinnitus levels according to ambient noise - even for your deaf ear. I read recently that tinnitus can actually be ameliorated somewhat by listening to certain music. It appears the actual music that helps does vary somewhat from individual to individual.

Right now I am a bit too cowardly to test this hypothesis (suppose the violin sets me off - what the hell do I do then?) but in time I am going to plunge in to a testing regime. I wonder if you might want to do the same - we could liaise on the results.

Funnily enough- at this moment my tinnitus is almost silent - after days of it being very obvious. Now I wonder why that would be?

[Don Richard]

It's my belief that when upper harmonics are not reproduced it affects the lower ones. Just a theory, but there has to be an explanation as to why when filters are applied that affect only things I cannot hear I immediately and clearly hear the impact.

The human psychoacoustic mechanism can actually recreate the missing fundamental freq of a musical note from the recognized harmonic structure of an instrument. If the harmonics are present in the proper proportions this phenomenon can be so realistic that one would swear that the fundamental tone is being played, although the ear cannot be hearing it. I think the same sort of thing is happening with overtones.

The problem with using notch filters to check hearing is that if the notch is deep enough to sufficiently attenuate the signal to inaudibility there will be artifacts in the audible range. The best way to test hearing is with single sine tones.

[LarryC]

In the meantime I am very interested in your observations in terms of the variation of your Tinnitus levels according to ambient noise - even for your deaf ear. I read recently that tinnitus can actually be ameliorated somewhat by listening to certain music.

Max,

I'm definitely not a tinnitus expert. First, let me say that inner-ear conditions are very, very bad -- one would never know just by looking at even a badly-off victim without obvious vertigo, nausea and vomiting, etc. -- but still, they are very debilitating and distracting, taking away one's ability to recall and concentrate. However, I have a diagnosed (by "5-4" consensus) case of Meniere's (in my left ear), which is a pathological condition in its own right. Meniere's is very kaleidoscopic, so there may not be a bright line between Meniere's and "only" tinnitus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9ni%C3%A8re's_disease To wit:

The symptoms of Ménière's are variable; not all sufferers experience the same symptoms. However, so-called "classic Ménière's" is considered to comprise the following four symptoms:

• Periodic episodes of rotary vertigo or dizziness.
• Fluctuating, progressive, unilateral (in one ear) or bilateral (in both ears) hearing loss.
• Unilateral or bilateral tinnitus.
• A sensation of fullness or pressure in one or both ears.

Ménière's often begins with one symptom, and gradually progresses. However, not all symptoms must be present for a doctor to make a diagnosis of the disease. Several symptoms at once is more conclusive than different symptoms at separate times.

Attacks of vertigo can be severe, incapacitating, and unpredictable. Attacks of vertigo last no longer than 24 hours. This combines with an increase in volume of tinnitus and temporary, albeit significant, hearing loss. Hearing may improve after an attack, but often becomes progressively worse.

I mention this because Meniere's seems to be a distinct condition that I have and you don't seem to. I know you didn't ask me that, but I thought I'd explain --

I, apparently like you, have have never had vertigo w/nausea & vomiting. I had mostly unilateral (left) tinnitus from the start, and definitely a sensation of fullness or pressure in both ears even before my precipitating attack in 1985 (apparently an impending Meniere's?). I started with the "broken volume control" for the first few years, and massively fluctuating hearing dysfunction and tinnitus during that period. I was repeatedly told that hearing loss would eventually follow, and so it did -- the above episodes gradually went away, but were replaced by a number of SUDDEN drops in hearing in my left ear, until my current -80 or 90 db hearing loss in that ear. Thank God I've never had signs of it spreading to my right ear, although such things happen.

Tinnitus has its own Wiki entry that sounds right to me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinnitus.

Tinnitus can also be caused by natural hearing impairment (as in aging), as a side-effect of some medications, and as a side-effect of genetic (congenital) hearing loss. However, the most common cause for tinnitus is noise-induced hearing loss...

Most people with tinnitus have hearing loss, in that they are often unable to properly hear external sounds which occur within the same range of frequencies as their "phantom sounds." This has led to the suggestion that one cause of tinnitus might be a homeostatic response of central dorsal cochlear nucleus auditory neurons that makes them hyperactive in compensation to auditory input loss...Cohort studies have demonstrated that damage to hearing (among other health effects) from unnatural levels of noise exposure is very widespread in industrialized countries...

Persistent tinnitus may cause irritability, fatigue, and on occasions clinical depression and musical hallucinations.

So, anyway, my tinnitus almost completely disappears after a little time in a very quiet room. In that case, I have NO problem hearing and conversing with anyone or any small group, and no one can tell that I am unilaterally profoundly deaf. However, almost any ambient noise will jump it up -- and I have NEVER been able to decipher why some kinds of noises or even some apparently quiet rooms' ambient sound (like commercial and medical office space) will raise it to a very high level so that I find it very hard to hear and understand what people are saying, especially to my left. Of course, loudness makes a huge difference: other settings (music auditoriums) if they are quiet have a much smaller effect, and can almost make the tinnitus disappear.

I do wonder why non-Meniere's tinnitus also leads to deafness, so maybe distinctions aren't that clear anyway.

What is meant by "50% deafness"? How many db?

As for your question about what kinds of music, I have always found that sharp transients will cause my tinnitus to increase and become debilitating. Obviously digital recordings are a sure-fire cause, especially if they include cymbals, drums, etc., which to me are close to NOISE -- a mass of tones and overtones. The purest tones, like solo strings or winds, cause me the least problem.

Thus, tube electronics are obviously much better for me than SS. My personal belief is that tubes have a more natural transient response, not the artificial edge of a lot of SS. I went to great trouble (and expense) to get a modded CD player that doesn't suffer from exaggerated transients according to my ears.

I have always had the impression that you aimed at the same kind of equipment that I have, and now I suppose our common problem is part of the reason.

The only testing I've had is numerous audiograms, and a variety of speech recognition and other tests besides just frequency. I'd be glad to try to dig it up and maybe even fax it if you think it'd be useful.

Good luck!

[maxg]

Larry,

Interesting theory on the similar disabilities leading to a similar selection of music system - I shall ponder on that one.

It would appear from your description that your case is worse than my own, currently at least. My big concern right now is that my condition is progressive (as yours was predicted to be - apparently (hopefully) totally incorrectly).

My hearing loss is 30 dB over 10 KHz in the left ear RELATIVE to my right ear. I understand my right ear response is within the normal parameters. I do not know how this relates to my tinnitus as mine is bilateral (although worse in the weaker ear).

Further I am 90% certain mine is not as a result to exposure to extreme noise at any point in my life. Whilst as as teen I did attend Rock concerts it was not a particularly regular occurance in comparison to many of my friends (who all appear to have normal hearing).

A few years ago I was hospitalized with a very serious throat infection that closed my airways. It appears I had pharengitus and larengitus concurrently and according to my blood work I had fought an infection and simply lost. Without antibiotics there is little doubt I would not be here today (my temperature hit 104 in hospital and they had a devil of a job getting it down again). As the ear is connected to the throat (eustasian tube I think) I have a feeling this might have damaged my hearing - I have no proof of this - just a hunch.

It could be that caused both or neither of my conditions, that my 2 conditions are one in the same or that they are unrelated. I have not been disgnosed with Meniere's but I have a feeling I will have to be tested for it when I go back to the expert.

I would be interested to know what kind of noise you hear. For me it is a wavering 10 KHz test tone like you get from a computer program. It took me a long time to figure out that it was not environmental and that it was coming from inside my head.

As an aside another thing I have no idea if related or otherwise - I have huge difficulty in equalizing. I was shown by a diver how to force the process - but I am one of the rare people who needs to do this even on a commercial flight. I used to face total agony each time I flew before I learned the trick.

This is the big problem with medicine - its so hard to figure out what is and is not relevent.

[LarryC]

Just briefly -- In your shoes, I also would suspect the infection. The equalizing difficulty sounds both terrible and suggestive. No wonder you haven't come to a Pilgrimage or a Strathmore concert yet!

Note that there isn't any one test for Meniere's, but rather clinical judgment of the whole constellation of signs and symptoms. One thing has been clear to me all along -- medical knowledge of this area is VERY weak and not very capable. It's better now, and at least we finally got an NIH Institute to promote research on these diseases:

National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) - Est. 1988
NIDCD conducts and supports biomedical research and research training on normal mechanisms as well as diseases and disorders of hearing, balance, smell, taste, voice, speech, and language that affect 46 million Americans.

The kind of noises I hear are:

• At its quietist, only a very high pitched steady sound, like tube rush at around 5-10 kHz.
• As it gets louder, it's much more of a "whoosh" -- the high-pitched thing is still there, only louder, but the whoosh predominates and plays the major role in drowning out what other people are saying. At its worst, I can barely understand what someone to my left or even straight ahead of me is saying.

Larry