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

the human body actually has lots of specialized receptors for sound/vibration, e.g. People Hear with Their Skin as well as Their Ears.

What this article explains is how feeling air puffs that go along with certain letters ("p," "b", "t", "k"...) can support the identification of them. The other articles you linked dicuss another feeling, namely pressure. So:
  1. The skin doesn't hear sound, it feels air flow or pressure. Hearing and feeling are different sensations. And air flow and pressure or not sound. So no, we shouldn't extend the audible range with frequency ranges related to others senses. Otherwise we might as well add the frequencies of light to it to include eye sight, which also supports identification of sound.
  2. The skin doesn't identify sounds, it only supports what we hear for sounds that provide a clue via puffs of air.
Just like in that other distaster topic of yours, the missing 15kHz fundamental thing, you're abusing scientific work to dress up your fantasies.
 
"Theory" in the sense of "speculation" or "conjecture" rather than the scientific use of the word...
There was a test done with the participants at an AES convention some decades back... it demonstrated that at least a small minority could indeed differentiate between recordings with content above 20KHz and recordings without....

You would need to seek it out.... but there is reasonable scientific evidence that some people can indeed hear (or perhaps more accurately "sense" ) beyond 20Khz
 
There was a test done with the participants at an AES convention some decades back... it demonstrated that at least a small minority could indeed differentiate between recordings with content above 20KHz and recordings without....

You would need to seek it out.... but there is reasonable scientific evidence that some people can indeed hear (or perhaps more accurately "sense" ) beyond 20Khz
Unless this is about Oohashi’s somewhat famous and controversial 'hypersonic effect' experiments, which were full of flaws and never properly proven or repeated, the claim about people sensing sounds above 20 kHz doesn’t make much sense. Maybe very young people with perfect hearing could detect something at those frequencies, but there’s very little in the way of actual musical content at 20 kHz or higher, and certainly nothing that could be considered a musical note. Saying a small group of people at some event decades ago could hear these frequencies isn’t real evidence. It’s more of a vague anecdote than anything meaningful.
 
You would need to seek it out.... but there is reasonable scientific evidence that some people can indeed hear (or perhaps more accurately "sense" ) beyond 20Khz
Ah, in this case you would need to seek it out since your presenting it as evidence.
Also just being presented at the AES doen't prove the test wasn't flawed in some way.
And in all the decades since it's never been repeated?
Any scientific test with a controversial result would always get repeated, repeatedly.
I'm not buying it. ;)
 
There was a test done with the participants at an AES convention some decades back... it demonstrated that at least a small minority could indeed differentiate between recordings with content above 20KHz and recordings without....

You would need to seek it out.... but there is reasonable scientific evidence that some people can indeed hear (or perhaps more accurately "sense" ) beyond 20Khz
Please see post #471 for the most recent clarification on this.
There is in fact no reproducible or credible evidence. And the evidence, like studies on ultrasonic content with material that actually lacked ultrasonic, points the opposite direction. It's not like ultrasonic content, drivers, and measurement gear doesn't exist.
 
Unless this is about Oohashi’s somewhat famous and controversial 'hypersonic effect' experiments, which were full of flaws and never properly proven or repeated, the claim about people sensing sounds above 20 kHz doesn’t make much sense. Maybe very young people with perfect hearing could detect something at those frequencies, but there’s very little in the way of actual musical content at 20 kHz or higher, and certainly nothing that could be considered a musical note. Saying a small group of people at some event decades ago could hear these frequencies isn’t real evidence. It’s more of a vague anecdote than anything meaningful.
The contention is that some people can sense frequencies beyond 20kHz - there is enough evidence out there to state with confidence that this is indeed true.

Is the fact that you can sense (barely!) with statistical positive confidence - the presence of ultrasonics, make those ultrasonics in any way useful? no.

Anecdotally, I had a friend who worked in security / alarms, he used to install a lot of ultrasonic movement sensors.... which are typically tuned to frequencies up above 20kHz (21kHz to 23KHz are typical).

In setting up the alarms they had to manually adjust the frequency during the installation, which most installers do with an appropriate rig which includes mic, and electronics - my friend had the good luck (and hearing) of having the limit of his hearing be right at the required frequency.... so he and his team used to save a lot of time by having him listen for the ultrasonics as they raised the frequency.... they would raise it until he could no longer hear it, drop it back a smidge to where he could barely sense it, and that was it.... when measured with the "rig" it was 21 to 23kHz right where it needed to be.
Interestingly he continued to be able to do this until he retired and sold the business in his late 50's....

As I said, not useful for recordings, movies, music etc... but, yes I feel confident that some humans have a much wider frequency range of hearing than most of us do. (Natural variability is bound to guarantee this in any case!)
 
Ah, in this case you would need to seek it out since your presenting it as evidence.
Also just being presented at the AES doen't prove the test wasn't flawed in some way.
And in all the decades since it's never been repeated?
Any scientific test with a controversial result would always get repeated, repeatedly.
I'm not buying it. ;)
It wasn't presented at the AES, they did the test during an AES conference, and used the Audience as the test subjects.... Results were later published - but it was aiming only at a simple answer to "can you statistically detect a difference between track A and track B and track C" - traditional simple ABX
Most people could not - but a small minority could, with statistically significant consistency
 
The contention is that some people can sense frequencies beyond 20kHz - there is enough evidence out there to state with confidence that this is indeed true.

Is the fact that you can sense (barely!) with statistical positive confidence - the presence of ultrasonics, make those ultrasonics in any way useful? no.

Anecdotally, I had a friend who worked in security / alarms, he used to install a lot of ultrasonic movement sensors.... which are typically tuned to frequencies up above 20kHz (21kHz to 23KHz are typical).

In setting up the alarms they had to manually adjust the frequency during the installation, which most installers do with an appropriate rig which includes mic, and electronics - my friend had the good luck (and hearing) of having the limit of his hearing be right at the required frequency.... so he and his team used to save a lot of time by having him listen for the ultrasonics as they raised the frequency.... they would raise it until he could no longer hear it, drop it back a smidge to where he could barely sense it, and that was it.... when measured with the "rig" it was 21 to 23kHz right where it needed to be.
Interestingly he continued to be able to do this until he retired and sold the business in his late 50's....

As I said, not useful for recordings, movies, music etc... but, yes I feel confident that some humans have a much wider frequency range of hearing than most of us do. (Natural variability is bound to guarantee this in any case!)
Natural differences in hearing are well understood, and while some people might sense frequencies above 20kHz, it’s uncommon and hard to verify without proper testing. Your friend’s ability is interesting, but it’s tough to confirm scientifically. Even so, this kind of sensitivity doesn’t really matter for music or audio, as most equipment and recordings are designed for the 20Hz to 20kHz range, and frequencies beyond that don’t contribute meaningfully to the listening experience.
 
I believe 20-20k is just some convenient range decided by someone in the past. It could have been 19-19k or 21-21k or 21-19k or whatever… We don’t have to hold on to it as if it’s some natural law.

Personally I think superb system performance in the 30-15k range is good enough to enjoy HiFi. Any superb performance wider than that is icing on a great cake.
 
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