where do Freq. ranges start / stop

[WMcD]

Good Grief. I get the feeling that Dave and I are getting into an argument over a subject on which we are basically in agreement on.

Looking back over hi fi history, I believe that 50 Hz was for several decades the lowest that LPs, analog tape recorders, and FM radio would go. Even then, there were, as mentioned, bass fiddles and electric guitar at 41 Hz. So we were a bit shy of the true lower limit.

Organ freaks, though, have always been a different culture, as I'm sure Dave will confirm. They back to the days of JS Bach, or so. Folks looking for 16 Hz. I that right, Dave?

Several decades ago I visited Norhtwestern University for an organ recital. On some bass notes, the air was shimmering. Smile.

WMcD

[CECAA850]

I heard midbass slam once that was astounding, yet have no idea where that would lie in the freq. range

I believe it's 50 to 70 Hz, the frequency that your chest cavity resonates. You need plenty of SPL to get the thump though.

[LarryC]

Interesting thread, mixing the subjective with actual hard numbers. The chart is fascinating, but I think mixes the fundamentals and overtones for some of the instruments. For example, the top "C" on the 88-key piano indeed has a fundamental of ~4,000 Hz that is shown as its top note, and a pipe organ also can have fundamentals twice that. (It's interesting to "hear" (almost, maybe) a melody played on that topmost octave in that very high-pitched rank). But I can't imagine the harp or the violin actually having fundamental notes as high as shown.

Overtones make all the difference and confuse things, of course, as someone noted. They often define what the note actually is, as well as the timbre that defines the instrument's sound.

I agree that mid-bass accounts for fullness and slam -- not the lowest notes.

Speaking of, I believe the K-horn starts falling off at around 45 Hz, and is more like10-15 db down by 33 Hz. Organs and string basses NEED a full lowest octave for those instruments to give the fullest foundation to the orchestra or organ. I still remember how much more solid the bass sounded with the Palladium subs filling out the P-38 Palladium HT setup in Indy several years ago. Even the P-39's couldn't do it w/o the sub. The lowest notes (33 Hz) in the Saint-Saens Organ Sym have to be partly imagined over K-horns w/o sub reinforcement. Also the Passacaglia and Fugue in c minor.

Gil is right as usual, the lowest string bass is 41 Hz. Notes that low need a lot of strength as well as accuracy, and I think the K-horn is up to it. But the 16' pipe organ C, maybe not so much. The main thing for me, though, is that those notes are missing from the LaScala, unfortunately.

Edited April 15, 2014 by LarryC

[joessportster]

Good info guys thanks, Keep it coming

[Sancho Panza]

Wonder what kind of SWerage it would take to reproduce Pipe Organ?

Would you have any widows left, if you did?

[beeker]

Alls i can say that midbass slam is no better than from a klipsch k402 horn. when that 402 kicks you in the sternum the way 32 15's do in an spl contest its pure punch that is none like any other. i love it when its only a quarter watt on the 402 doing it making it all the more interesting

[LarryC]

Gil, I think there were some misunderstandings, or maybe some evolving clarification, over the supposed 50 Hz limit on analog sound sources. The RIAA curve, for example, reduced equalization for LPs below 50 Hz, supposedly to suppress turntable rumble. However, those explanations were looking only at the RIAA RECORDING curve, not realizing that it and the RIAA PLAYBACK curve were mirror images of each other, and RIAA playback re-boosted the bass below 50 Hz.

I suspect that's an imperfect explanation -- it doesn't make complete sense when I read it over -- but the simple fact is that there is NO reduction in that deep bass as played back from LPs on RIAA equalization. But I think that was the source of the 50 Hz mythology

I recall a longish thread several years ago in which some doggedly swore that LPs didn't have deep bass because of that misunderstood rolloff. Not true.

Edited April 15, 2014 by LarryC

[Mallette]

Gil, no debate. Just pointing out that, unless you restrict your source material, you can't claim "high fidelity" unless you can get down to 16.5 hz. And it's really piano that is most commonly encountered in those areas. I found through experimentation that it isn't only the poor engineering of so many piano recordings that makes that instrument the Waterloo of so many engineers, but also that a realistic reproduction of a grand piano really requires response smoothly into the 20s.

PWK made it clear that the K'horn was a judgment call of performance over the majority of the spectrum vs. price/size. Sort of like the approach to lightspeed, the mass of a K'horn increases almost exponentially as you add another couple of notes. He had to make a call. The Frazier Eleven gets you another half octave, and a third more bulk. Another half would require nearly doubling that using Helmholtz enclosures.

Dave

Edited April 15, 2014 by Mallette