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

[krabapple]

But a few look ~legit 192kHz. A Haydn Quartet below.


Anyway the answer for you should be quite clear: yes there is quite a bit of sound above 20kHz .. even in such a fairly dubious recording.

'Sound' is something that can be heard. So, at least for humans, there really isn't much of it above 20 kHz, even in that Haydn recording.

The energy detected there above ~24kHz is at ultrasonic frequencies. If you filter out everything below them you will 'hear' only silence.

You might want to not re-re-re-flog this poor dead horse, that you have flogged before.

 

[Vacceo]

sigh. This again?






The 'low' frequencies they refer to are in the audible range (20-200 Hz) and the infrasound below that can be 'perceived' if 'level is sufficiently high'. There are plenty of audiophiles who already fetishize subwoofer output below 20 Hz, so what exactly is new here?

Infrasonics are super fun for those of us who love horror films. However, to get the "pump" at noticeable levels, the gear is not cheap at all and I agree that on a normal use, it's not worth it.

 

[Julf]

there is quite a bit of sound above 20kHz ..

There is some "signal", but not very useful. Technically ultrasonic noise.

 

[Sal1950]

Anyway the answer for you should be quite clear: yes there is quite a bit of sound above 20kHz .. even in such a fairly dubious recording.

The whole world around us is full of ultrasonic sound that we can't hear.
As well as light that we can't see.
Poor old humanity, we got shortchanged in so many areas.
Even the lowly dog can hear so much better than I.
In the army I handled German Shepard scout dogs. They can hear the wind blowing over a tripwire 50' away.
And smell enemy presents at the same or more distance.
Thank God for the lives they saved.

 

[MAB]

I love these threads, "Let's have everybody prove what I want to believe!"

OP should demonstrate what he and others can actually hear, rather than this extended speculative BS.
The experiments referenced here are quite easy to do. Not that they have ever been repeatable, but perhaps the difficulty in reproducing the original result could be investigated. Just need an audiophile budget for supertweeters and some teenagers... Actually since the effect is said to be non-auditory, why limit ourselves to teenagers? And since supertweeters aren't the only source of ultrasonics, don't even need the big budget, try listening to LED lights for instance.

 

[Sal1950]

try listening to LED lights for instance.

Do they make a sound?

 

[MAB]

Do they make a sound?

Yes

 

[Sal1950]

Yes

Humm, they're probably 10 or more active in my room right now and I don't hear a thing. LOL

 

[lashto]

'Sound' is something that can be heard. So, at least for humans, there really isn't much of it above 20 kHz, even in that Haydn recording.

The energy detected there above ~24kHz is at ultrasonic frequencies. If you filter out everything below them you will 'hear' only silence.

You might want to not re-re-re-flog this poor dead horse, that you have flogged before.

yours is just one definition for sound. There are quite a few others, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound#Definition
Or the short "definition for everyone": it's just a bunch of bloody waves in the air.

You/me/anyone can have lots of oppinions but the well studied and documented truth is quite clear: sound is not an ears-only experience but full-body. And it is perceived both consciously and unconsciously.

Every single living cell reacts to sound/vibration and there are many living creatures that experience sound in spite of having no ears .. even plants do. Besides that, the human body actually has lots of specialized receptors for sound/vibration, e.g. People Hear with Their Skin as well as Their Ears. Those things are all over your body, including internal organs. And if you are missing a prepuce you may not get the full experience of low freqs (i.e. "vibrations between 10 and 50 hertz").. just saying.
Since many/most of those extra receptors are in the skin & fingers, wearing a ski suit/gloves may not be the best way to experience sound. OTOH, the best way (naked) may be quite an issue in a few places.

Anyway ...
You and anyone else may only care about the ears experience and may think that this thread is "useless".
That's 100% fine with me, I'm happy for you and wish you good luck!

 

[Sal1950]

Anyway ...
You and anyone else may only care about the ears experience and may think that this thread is "useless".
That's 100% fine with me, I'm happy for you and wish you good luck!

There's sound, and then there's sound "audible by human beings"
You can wax lyrically all you like but until you can prove under controlled conditions that you can
actually hear some of this baloney all you offer is myth and story.

 

[kemmler3D]

I look forward to results of tests with any supertweeters or whatever.

I will just personally say that low-distortion infrasound isn't necessarily enjoyable. I can get 15hz out of my LCD-XC cans, and clean. But you don't hear anything, you just get a moment of panic that there's an earthquake or something. I think there is a reason that infrasound is said to be mostly used for horror films, if at all.

Supposedly some haunted houses can be explained in terms of infrasonic resonances and such. It can even cause hallucinations, apparently.

Why this thread is still going, I am not sure. I can imagine a world in which ultrasound is somehow slightly perceptible through the skin or something. But I am still unconvinced that it would be worth doing in a mainstream $$ system.

Everything in speaker design is trade-offs, so why trade off audible sound for "perceptible" ultrasound?

 

[Julf]

yours is just one definition for sound. There are quite a few others, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound#Definition
Or the short "definition for everyone": it's just a bunch of bloody waves in the air.

Or, from the same source, "Auditory sensation evoked by the oscillation"

You/me/anyone can have lots of oppinions but the well studied and documented truth is quite clear: sound is not an ears-only experience but full-body.

No, none of your references actually state that. What they state is that the *perception* of sound is affected by multiple factors. We already know that. Perception of sound is affected by zillions of things, such as our expectations, mood, amount of alcohol and/or drugs consumed...

 

[Sal1950]

I will just personally say that low-distortion infrasound isn't necessarily enjoyable.

I've heard low loud infrasound can make you lose control of your bowels.

 

[ahofer]

 

[MRC01]

...
Poor old humanity, we got shortchanged in so many areas.
Even the lowly dog can hear so much better than I.
In the army I handled German Shepard scout dogs. They can hear the wind blowing over a tripwire 50' away.
...

It's a bit oversimplifying to say dogs can hear better. Sure, they can hear higher frequencies than humans. But human low frequency hearing is better than dogs - and most other animals. Of course there is also amplitude sensitivity, and some dogs do beat humans there at least in the high frequencies. Here it varies a lot by breed. Incidentally, I've read that cats have better hearing than dogs - but it's harder to measure because cats don't care about taking the test

As to why humans have better low frequency hearing - I can only speculate that perhaps because we are bipeds. Quadrapeds may not need to hear low frequencies with their ears because low frequencies typically cause floor/Earth vibrations they may be able to detect through their feet.

PS: content relevant to the OP: I think it's not a bad idea to have an extra octave of bandwidth beyond what we can hear in order to ensure that we stay away from the limits of the equipment within our range of hearing. Especially transducers, which tend to have more distortion at their frequency limits.

 

[ElJaimito]

Since it's a nice new year, why don't we cut back to the original question, and its answer:

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

A: No. No no no no no no no, no no no no, no no no nono no no. So -- no.

There. That's simple - no?

 

[Robin L]

Completely off-topic but I've heard that dogs and cats are not only companion animals but also serve to warn us of sounds (and other sensory information) we are incapable of detecting. Cats can detect sounds up to 77kHz, dogs up to 44 kHz.

 

[Steve H]

yours is just one definition for sound. There are quite a few others, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound#Definition
Or the short "definition for everyone": it's just a bunch of bloody waves in the air.

You/me/anyone can have lots of oppinions but the well studied and documented truth is quite clear: sound is not an ears-only experience but full-body. And it is perceived both consciously and unconsciously.

Every single living cell reacts to sound/vibration and there are many living creatures that experience sound in spite of having no ears .. even plants do. Besides that, the human body actually has lots of specialized receptors for sound/vibration, e.g. People Hear with Their Skin as well as Their Ears. Those things are all over your body, including internal organs. And if you are missing a prepuce you may not get the full experience of low freqs (i.e. "vibrations between 10 and 50 hertz").. just saying.
Since many/most of those extra receptors are in the skin & fingers, wearing a ski suit/gloves may not be the best way to experience sound. OTOH, the best way (naked) may be quite an issue in a few places.

Anyway ...
You and anyone else may only care about the ears experience and may think that this thread is "useless".
That's 100% fine with me, I'm happy for you and wish you good luck!

Sorry we debunked this stuff years ago.

 

[pablolie]

Sorry we debunked this stuff years ago.

Plus there's a zillion pieces of gear that supports far more than 20Hz-20kHz readily available these days (may be at +/-6dB etc but hey). Explore for yourselves it it makes a difference in your audio enjoyment.

 

[danadam]

The spectrogram still seems quite strange, e.g. why are there 'empty' bands at ~70/50/40 kHz?! And the whole 40-80kHz band is quite empty/quiet and then the 80-90kHz band has approx the same sound energy as 30-40kHz. May be the dubious source,

Looks to me like upsampling with very shallow anti-imaging filter.