Frequency

[rman9]

Most of the Salk speakers rated upper end says 40Khz.. Isn't the listening capability of the human ears if you are lucky goes up to only 20Khz? what am I missing
What would a 40Khz sound in real life?

 

[Frgirard]

most

Most of the Salk speakers rated upper end says 40Khz.. Isn't the listening capability of the human ears if you are lucky goes up to only 20Khz? what am I missing
What would a 40Khz sound in real life?

The old ditton 66 reached 40 kHz
Why 40 kHz because you are sure to have 10 KHz/15 kHz without issues

it's like sub reached 18 Hz, inaudible without a sound level that these sub are incapable. To decrease the groupe delay at audible frequencies

 

[Beershaun]

If your DAC has a very slow rolloff filter then your speaker will be exposed to frequencies above 20khz. In that case you want to make sure your speakers can handle those frequencies without distorting or burning up.

 

[DVDdoug]

Right. Anything above the audible range doesn't matter. (Some people will claim differently, but listening experiments have been done.)

But hey... If a tweeter goes to 40KHz the specs should say so.

What would a 40Khz sound in real life?

It sounds like silence!

It actually turns-out that even if you can hear up to 20KHz in a hearing test, your ears are less-sensitive at the highest frequencies and any musical harmonics around that range are weak so those highest frequencies generally get masked (drowned-out) in the context of music. Still, if you are building audio equipment it's a good idea to cover the whole audio range. But lossy audio compression takes advantage of masking (not just the highest frequencies) to throw-away more than half of the data.

 

[DVDdoug]

In that case you want to make sure your speakers can handle those frequencies without distorting or burning up.

You can't hear distortion above your hearing range and increasing the frequency range doesn't improve power handling, (You can fry a tweeter with frequencies you can't hear, whieher the tweeter is actually reproducing the "sound" or not,)

 

[Ultrasonic]

I'd say most speakers have high frequency output that has started to roll-off before 20 kHz, so personally I see a spec of up to 40 kHz telling me it should at least be capable of a flat output to 20 kHz. Also, if a speaker does have output to 40 kHz then it should say so as far as I'm concerned, for simple accuracy.

 

[MZKM]

The prevailing notion is that if it has no trouble going up that high, then it should have no issue at 20kHz. Also, some metal dome tweeters have a resonance around 27kHz that can cause IMD in the audible range (wether the IMD levels caused are audible caused is a different discussion), so saying it can go to 40kHz is saying there shouldn’t be any large resonances <30kHz.

Now, some speakers measured have claimed >30kHz yet the linearity is terrible, some like -5dB at 15kHz and going back up after.

 

[rman9]

Why 40 kHz because you are sure to have 10 KHz/15 kHz without issues

That is quite a bit of built in margin in performance than..

 

[rman9]

It sounds like silence!

It'd probably drive my little dog crazy..

 

[dfuller]

Also, some metal dome tweeters have a resonance around 27kHz that can cause IMD in the audible range

This is generally a feature of aluminum and titanium tweeters. Beryllium's breakup modes are much higher up around 40k or so.

 

[DWPress]

I have ribbon tweeters that go up above 30Kh but I can't hear above 16 so implement a low pass filter at 17. Not missing any musical content to my ears.

edit: And most of my friends are old too so they're not missing anything either!

 

[Ultrasonic]

I have ribbon tweeters that go up above 30Kh but I can't hear above 16 so implement a low pass filter at 17. Not missing any musical content to my ears.

edit: And most of my friends are old too so they're not missing anything either!

This may be teaching you to such eggs but bear in mind that the filter will likely be affecting phase into the frequency range that you can hear. Unless you have a problem with higher frequency output I'd be tempted to not use the filter myself.

 

[Frgirard]

It sounds like silence!

It'd probably drive my little dog crazy..

 

[DWPress]

This may be teaching you to such eggs but bear in mind that the filter will likely be affecting phase into the frequency range that you can hear. Unless you have a problem with higher frequency output I'd be tempted to not use the filter myself.

Phase is just fine, I use rePhase to dial in my active XO. Your hypothesis may be correct for random filter implementation without measurements though.

 

[Explorer]

Snake oil marketing.

 

[Ultrasonic]

Phase is just fine, I use rePhase to dial in my active XO. Your hypothesis may be correct for random filter implementation without measurements though.

Yes, fair enough, I realised after I'd posted I probably should have qualified by comment by 'depending on the filter implementation' .

 

[DWPress]

'depending on the filter implementation'

And even then maybe not a huge deal for far field listening after reflections. I correct for phase because I can and I'm just that sort of fella but check out some of the discussions regarding audibility of phase, especially in the upper frequency ranges.

 

[Ultrasonic]

And even then maybe not a huge deal for far field listening after reflections. I correct for phase because I can and I'm just that sort of fella but check out some of the discussions regarding audibility of phase, especially in the upper frequency ranges.

Yes I'm aware this isn't a clear-cut area but on the flip-side is there any real problem 'solved' by rolling off the treble as you have? To me it seemed like somewhat unnecessary signal processing with a possible downside.

For context, my main speakers for a long time have been a pair of Meadowlark Shearwater HotRods that do roll-off noticeably before 20 kHz. I recently bought a pair of Edifier S3000Pros with a claimed response up to 40 kHz to try out, and I do have it in mind to have a play with different high frequency roll-offs to try to get a feel for what range may actually be useful (to my ears). I'd been mulling over the complications of doing so as a result.

Edit: I've been redecorating my lounge ('listening room') recently and so haven't got round to making any measurements on the Edifiers yet to see what their output actually looks like.

 

[Katji]

I recently bought a pair of Edifier S3000Pros with a claimed response up to 40 kHz to try out, and I do have it in mind to have a play with different high frequency roll-offs to try to get a feel for what range may actually be useful (to my ears). I'd been mulling over the complications of doing so as a result.

Edit: I've been redecorating my lounge ('listening room') recently and so haven't got round to making any measurements on the Edifiers yet to see what their output actually looks like.

Hey, that'll be interesting. ...I should try some different HF roll-offs - although I probably wouldn't notice.

 

[DWPress]

To me it seemed like somewhat unnecessary signal processing with a possible downside.

Trivial with an active XO already in place and I can A/B it with a single mouse click in real time and it's just a common LR4 filter. I can't really hear any difference but I'm not pushing any unnecessary power to the tweets so - win. I also have a steep HP filter at 27Hz because I have a room resonance at 24Hz (something not nailed down vibrates!) and my system can easily get up to 105dB cleanly so these filters can be valuable at high listening levels though I rarely do such disservice to my ears.

There is an argument that you might be losing HF transients but if you can't hear up there then? There are plenty of online tests available to self-test your hearing range that you can play on your system or headphones, worth checking out.