Shouldn't we upgrade the 20-20 audible range ?!

[sigbergaudio]

Given the age, I could care less for above 14-15kz level, with a notion that that will inevitably get reduced over time.

In the HT world, few people are chasing sub-bass that is present in some tracks, and could be extracted from others. Example would be the opening of Edge or Tomorrow where there is sub 10hz bass. One will not necessarily hear it but will feel it which can be positively confirmed with the sub woofers moving. It is acquired taste and some people actually feel nauseous at these frequencies. You would also need to have an army of really large subs to get this 10hz signal to 100dB, which is extremely loud overall, but in this range would actually need to be probably even "louder" aka more tactile to feel the full impact.

Most mainstream subs (even the "big ones") don't go below 15hz extension for a reason. It does cover 20hz at decent level and then rolls off. Even at 20hz, it is usual to have -10dB or more compared to the max sub output in the higher range. Also, even in HT, a lot of movies are stripped of the low bass info and bottom out at some 30hz (which can be restored by freeware software at your own risk). IMO absolutely no need to extend the range and especially not in the low end. But would be useful to have the full 20hz extension for HT.

100dB at 10hz in-room is actually not necessarily as hard as it sounds, because many rooms will have massive room gain this low. If you can hear it is another matter.

 

[NTK]

Isn't there anyone in audio who wants to join the 21st century?
And if so, why is that? Is it because audio is actually dominated by old-farts (like most of us) who can barely hear 15kHz? Is it because young people are actually unaware that they are getting a truncated version of what they can actually hear? Is it because lack of money/funds? Lack of interest? Lack of imagination? Lack of competence?
Lack of ... what exactly?

For any serious technology company, why would they want to expand their highly valuable (and limited) engineering resources into "improving" things that have no real appreciable benefits. Instead they can have their engineers work on actual leading edge technologies that can enable new applications that weren't possible before, such as high speed DAC's that work in the multiple 10's of GHz.

A different example: To enable EUV (extreme UV) lithography for manufacturing chips in the "low single digit nm process nodes", Zeiss invested (among a large number of other areas) in huge vacuum chambers for EUV metrology as EUV is highly absorbed by every medium including air, and EUV optical systems can only be properly measured under vacuum.

If you were Zeiss, would you send your engineers to work on yet another nifty 50 photo lens or have them work on EUV litho? And if you are an up-and-coming opticist fresh graduate with ambition, what do you want to work on? EUV or photo optic?

 

[radix]

You are not understanding what you are reading in those studies and/or how it relates to a real world situation where you are playing back music through an audio system. You will not be able to hear any content over 20khz, period.

You talk about 24-28khz at 100dB. If you had 24khz content in typical music, where 24khz is played back at 100dB, the level in the bass would be maybe 120dB. Picture yourself at the very front row of an outdoors heavy metal concert. This is the type of sound level we are talking about. Do you honestly thing you'd be able to distinguish sounds above 20khz (or even 10khz) in such a situation, when people can barely hear it with headphones on in a laboratory situation with no other sound present but that single 24khz sine wave?

One must also ask, what is making that tone? Most natural sources top out around 16k (cymbal, violin, etc.). So we're talking 1st or 2nd harmonics, which will be down at least 10dB from the fundamental. So that 100dB 24 kHz tone is likely a 110 dB (or more) 12 kHz fundamental. And the directivity of a speaker reproducing 24 kHz would probably be pretty small.

 

[MRC01]

Do many acoustic instruments produce sound above 20 KHz? Flute or Piccolo? Cymbals or Bells?

Yes, cymbals & bells, especially small ones. Also clicky/snappy instruments like castanets.
Flutes and piccolos, not so much. Their highest octaves don't have a lot of harmonics; they are almost pure sine waves.
Bagpipes, for sure - some of them have seemingly endless spectrum into the supersonic.
Jangling keys for sure - well into supersonic, it's a natural acoustic sound, if not an "instrument". A good way to test equipment - record jangling keys and see how it sounds.
That's just off the top of my head - no doubt there are others.
Of course it depends on how far away you are. Many instruments (such as violin) produce a lot of HF harmonics that you can only hear up close right next to it. Just a few feet away they are gone, naturally attenuated. What the musician hears is quite different from what the audience hears.

 

[eddantes]

https://www.audiocheck.net/blindtests_frequency.php?frq=20

I think for the purposes of sound reproduction (for enterainment) 20-20K is already a broad enough spectrum. Especially, since the market for audio gear is populated by (the afore mentioned) geezers that would struggle to hear 15KHz.

 

[Brian Hall]

Do many acoustic instruments produce sound above 20 KHz? Flute or Piccolo? Cymbals or Bells?

Some Data on Orchestral Instruments

 

[Brian Hall]

Some Data on Orchestral Instruments

View attachment 375983

It is almost like our musical instruments were designed to play frequencies in the range we can hear best.

 

[pablolie]

...

Quick & clear conclusion: at the fairly ok level of 100dB, the audible range is actually 8Hz - 28kHz.

...

Not sure it's clear. Notably absent are details on the testing methodology. So count me skeptical unless more details are given. How did they eliminate any possible source of noise pollution etc etc.

 

[Brian Hall]

More detail on frequencies that matter. From: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/9781119164746.app2

 

[solderdude]

For these numbers too... cutoff points are important. There are many instruments with harmonics above 20kHz but that really does not matter much unless one is archiving.
20Hz - 20kHz is a pointless number without cut-off points and is just something used in advertising.

 

[Chromatischism]

- touch. In the gaming community the mouse sensitivity/speed is very important and (again) for a long time it was considered that ~2000 DPI is "more than enough for everyone". Another round of 'controversy' and nowadays professional gamer mice are at 10000+ DPI and pretty much any consumer one is at 2000+ too.

I get where you're going with the other examples, but this is a bad one. Mouse DPI is pure marketing and no one even uses those settings. Everyone turns it down.

 

[MRC01]

Some Data on Orchestral Instruments

..

Neither this nor the other answers the question. These references are about fundamental tones. The question is about frequency response which includes all the harmonics. The frequency range of the harmonics can go 20x or more higher than the fundamentals - or not. Depends on the instrument. A bagpipe or oboe without the harmonics is no longer a bagpipe or oboe.

PS: I'm not saying a system needs supersonic frequency response above 20 kHz... but if its frequency response were limited to the fundamentals shown in the above references, it would sound like a steaming pile of poo.

 

[sigbergaudio]

Neither this nor the other answers the question. These references are about fundamental tones. The question is about frequency response which includes all the harmonics. The frequency range of the harmonics can go 20x or more higher than the fundamentals - or not. Depends on the instrument. A bagpipe or oboe without the harmonics is no longer a bagpipe or oboe.

PS: I'm not saying a system needs supersonic frequency response above 20 kHz... but if its frequency response were limited to the fundamentals shown in the above references, it would sound like a steaming pile of poo.

I don't know how accurate this is, but this chart is often used as a reference to what you are asking.

 

[Killingbeans]

So what if most people (presumably) cannot hear over 20kHz? Most people cannot distinguish 300 PPI either. But the vision/display guys are building 600+ PPI. Because they want ... because they can ... because progress...

Not really progress, is it? More like a peacock showing feathers. Pointless.

Isn't there anyone in audio who wants to join the 21st century?
And if so, why is that? Is it because audio is actually dominated by old-farts (like most of us) who can barely hear 15kHz? Is it because young people are actually unaware that they are getting a truncated version of what they can actually hear? Is it because lack of money/funds? Lack of interest? Lack of imagination? Lack of competence?
Lack of ... what exactly?

Lack of information above 20kHz making music more realistic and/or more enjoyable?

 

[Timcognito]

More like a peacock showing feathers. Pointless.

Not so those feathers can lead to gratuitous sex with female Peacocks.

 

[oleg87]

Isn't there anyone in audio who wants to join the 21st century?
And if so, why is that? Is it because audio is actually dominated by old-farts (like most of us) who can barely hear 15kHz? Is it because young people are actually unaware that they are getting a truncated version of what they can actually hear? Is it because lack of money/funds? Lack of interest? Lack of imagination? Lack of competence?
Lack of ... what exactly?

The capability for playing back content well above >20khz has been with us for a long time. No one's stopping you from pursuing these avenues of utter inanity to your satisfaction.

 

[MRC01]

I don't know how accurate this is, but this chart is often used as a reference to what you are asking.
...

Yep, that's what I meant, and the graph is closer to what answers the question.

 

[Brian Hall]

Yep, that's what I meant, and the graph is closer to what answers the question.

Those harmonics appear to all be below 20khz. Nothing musical above 20khz. Just noise.

 

[Keith_W]

I don't know about the rest of you, but I have to admit that I do some illogical things. For example:

- I know for a fact that I can not hear above 15kHz. Yet I insist on making sure my speakers can reproduce up to 20kHz.
- I don't think I would pass a blind test between FLAC and high bitrate MP3. Yet every month I pay extra for my lossless music streaming subscription.
- My DAC's performance improves from -111dB SINAD to -115dB if I feed it 192kHz music instead of 44.1kHz. I upsample all my music in JRiver. Do I think I can hear the difference? Not a chance.
- I am highly doubtful if I could tell the difference between a subwoofer that was misaligned by 1ms or not. Yet I time align my subwoofers to 0.021ms.

I suppose in some ways that makes me no different to some of those subjectivists who spend money on things they can't hear. The only difference is that I am honest about being unable to hear it. But either way, money has been spent, or effort has been expanded.

So my take on this is: so what if someone wants to increase the high frequency limit for recordings? Not the first time this has been proposed (see DSD, MQA, etc). If it became available, I would stupidly want to "upgrade" to it even though I know full well I can't hear it.

 

[MRC01]

Those harmonics appear to all be below 20khz. Nothing musical above 20khz. Just noise.

Because that graph is oversimplified.