The bottom octave

[FireEmblem]

Do you make this stuff up?

From https://www.auralexchange.com/knowl...on-coefficient-of-human-body-in-octave-bands/

"The audience constitutes a major sound absorbent material in most performance spaces like cinemas, auditoriums, venues and non-inclusion of the sound absorbed by the audience in the determination of the optimum reverberation time from the design stage accounts for the problem of poor sound quality in many projects."

That's exactly what I said. Do you understand how damping works?

 

[Oddball]

That's exactly what I said. Do you understand how damping works?

The problem is that you don't understand anything and still keep posting . While this is your right I would again encourage all not to feed the Troll.

His strategy is just to keep the argument going without addressing the fundamental questions that would be in order for this threat. That is not how it is supposed to work. Don't know from what woods the Troll came from, but if it smells and talks like a Troll - it is a Troll.

So once again - please don't feed the Troll.

 

[Robin L]

I would be interested in the thoughts of others regarding the significance of the bottom octave in music/speakers.

It seems that in the real world, there is very little music produced that has any content below 40 Hz.

My understanding from other forums is that none of the major labels produce any music with content below 40 Hz.

I have trouble identifying any song (other than perhaps a few classical pieces) that have content below 40 Hz.

So, how important is it that a speaker system reproduce quaity sound in the bottom octave - other than inellectual satisfaction of knowing it can?

Dance/Techno, Classical Organ music, Orchestra—I listen to all these genres, might say I'm something of a bass-head. My subwoofer goes down to around 27 Hz, the IEMs I've been using lately go well below 20Hz. A lot of pop/rock has bass lower than 40 Hz, but playback gear that doesn't go all the way down into the bottom octave is still enjoyable and is the norm for most people.

 

[Ropeburn]

Dance/Techno, Classical Organ music, Orchestra—I listen to all these genres, might say I'm something of a bass-head. My subwoofer goes down to around 27 Hz, the IEMs I've been using lately go well below 20Hz. A lot of pop/rock has bass lower than 40 Hz, but playback gear that doesn't go all the way down into the bottom octave is still enjoyable and is the norm for most people.

Go to any test signal video on uToob and read the comments. It's a blast.

"Omg I can hear 20Hz on my phone, incredible, these speakers have improved so much!"

No you idiot, you can't and they haven't. What you hear is the speaker trying hard and utterly failing, almost breaking!

 

[Bloomer]

Go to any test signal video on uToob and read the comments. It's a blast.

"Omg I can hear 20Hz on my phone, incredible, these speakers have improved so much!"

No you idiot, you can't and they haven't. What you hear is the speaker trying hard and utterly failing, almost breaking!

Amazing! My phone sounds like "neet neet neet neet" and it's a good one! They must have the Tsar Bomba Super XL iPhone.

 

[Bloomer]

I should have said instruments with a fundemental below 40hz you can hear are rare. A tuba playing C1 has a fundemental (31hz) 20db below the higher harmonics and 20db harder to hear (fletcher munson). https://www.mjtruiz.com/publications/2017-03-tuba.pdf

I believe the dolby/dts spec of 31hz is all you need for music or HT.

masking pretty much always enters into the equation, also.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Interesting thread, I think there's a lot of misunderstanding going on regarding the arguments.



Yeah, but a lot of modern music is made by anyone and their grandmother who started out making music 2 years ago. 16 year olds land hits on Spotify through Tiktok and Social Media. Chances are very high, they don't know too much about mixing and simply didn't remove that frequency because they didn't even know it's there and couldn't hear it, just like 99% of the rest of the world.



Everyone who went to a cinema has heard it, in a much more powerful manner than any home setup could ever provide. That low end is great for cinema, soundtracks and trailer music that is supposed to be listened to at the theather, but has not much purpose outside of that. In musical compositions it will only consume a lot of headroom for almost nobody being able to hear it anyways.

All the information that's supposed to create energy, where the bass and kick shines, is higher than 40Hz. The attack transient is what mainly determines how loud and impactful we perceive something like a kick, and the attack transient is <0.1-0.5ms and way higher than 40Hz.




Perhaps for the same reason as #1, but from the other side: Audio engineering and all of that was still in very early development back then. People knew not as much as we know today. And speaker systems back then weren't even remotely as good as today in producing these low frequencies.

Content below 40Hz doesn't really have much in it, it's just air, pressure, rumbling. There's no harmonic content, no texture, no transients. It's absolutely not essential for any kind of music and not relevant for 99% of the listeners out there.

What subwoofers do what most people probably mix up with what they think feels better, is amplifying important low frequencies that we're also able to hear without a sub.

It's the 50-150Hz region where a lot of lowend is determined, that is now amplified by the subwoofer and can really put pressure into the room, which is of course fun to experience.

This is almost entirely narrow minded bollox IME.
What you write may be true about pop music but there is a lot of other music too. Admittedly pop probably is the majority of listeners, but certainly not 99%.
Getting the lowest octave in good quality has always been difficult and expensive, but it was certainly possible, and happening over 50 years ago IME. Not very good from LP a bit better from tape R to R back then but there were speakers that could do it, The IMF TLS80 were the best I heard.
One of my favourite recordings, Elgar's "Dream of Gerontius" Boult and LPO has organ pedal notes in the final "softly and gently" which make a huge emotional impact, true, most hifi owners will indeed have never experienced it but that does NOT mean it didn't exist on recordings 50 years ago, nor that it is not worth reproducing, it is very important, as it is in many types of music, if not most of the popular bands of my youth.

 

[FrantzM]

Hi

I did post about this but...

Bass reproduction is more complex than people realize and important too... I will not re-write posts I made on the subject but ... Too may HiFi systems are weak in the bass. THeir owners often resort to explain how the midrange is everything.. no! The entire spectrum is .. every ... thing. At least the portion the listener can perceive. For most of us getting over 60, we are limited in treble , mostly things over 12 kHz, where there is not much going on ANYWAY.. The power of most instruments is concentrated below 8 KHz ... Most people even those around 90, can hear down to 30 Hz clearly ... So...

The issues are multiple for the bass..
For one the room messes us bass and this, badly... For most people, in most rooms , good Bass, even at one specific position requires both EQ and DSP. not either, both!
Second, the SPL required for good bass perception, is often more than many, so-called full range speakers are capable of. Many speakers can indeed provide a flat FR from 35 to 20000 Hz at say, 70 dB at the listening position but fail to produce sufficient level of bass if the overall volume is increased... And this links to issue number one.. EQ may require a bit more than the speakers are capable of, even if one plays the game of not boosting any frequency band but cutting some .. net result is a reduction of overall level, including the bass and there.. Fletcher-Munson rears its head. The bass is perhaps there but you won't hear as well as you should .. or can..

Subwoofers to the rescue, even if they don't plumb the depth of audibility:
Why?: It is a relatively trivial task even for cheap subwoofers. to reproduce 100 db at 2 meters between 50 to 100 Hz.. And that brings us back to the so-called full range speakers... Let's take a stellar speaker, the Neumann KH 150, can it reproduce well, 40 Hz at 2 meters at 105 dB? Which is the level at which it needs to play that 40 Hz tone for the human listener to perceive it as loud as 1 KHz playing at 75 dB.... ??? Not sure.

Subwoofers introduce another level of complexity, that of integrating the subwoofer with your mains.. Adding a subwoofer is in effect adding a new "Way" in your speakers.. a 3 way speaker system, becomes with the addition of a subwoofer, a 4 way... and that be a problematic situation if you do not address it, or at least are aware of it. Today we have several tools at our disposal, some free, (REW, MSO, OCA Scripts, etc) and if the issues are addressed , the listener is on its path to Hi-Fi.

If the bass is not good .. NO HI-FI ... IMHO

 

[Ropeburn]

Nice to see we're talking about bass again. Last page or two weren't pretty

On the topic of amateurs flooding streaming services... I mean, who really cares if they don't do everything professionally and low cut and whatnot? It's not like a 20 Hz bass impulse would do instant damage to speakers that only do 40 properly. Although...

Speaking of which: can someone analyse this one? The lowest notes from 1:30.

Wompabounce.mp3 | Powered by Box

app.box.com

Ever since the PC died, I'm struggling to find a good audio editor app for Android with all the basics (Wavelab style) and especially analyser.

Above old electro jam must be technically horrible. Proper separation of kick and bass, what is that? Still a lot of fun, hah. I have a mild suspicion my subwoofer breaking (both cone disintegrating and amp blowing) must have a reason... I used to do this stuff for hours daily.

 

[Flaesh]

analyse this one?

 

[Ropeburn]

View attachment 495073

Nice, thanks. Must be like this:

Edit: saw the additional graph. Damn, that's some serious subbass energy. It's a three-oscillator synth patch, the stuff below 20Hz must be the moderate amount of additional pink noise (for nice dirt and giving the filter more to do with). I'm kinda proud!


Thanks again.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

The IMF TLS80 were the best I heard.

Yes!! Impressed me the first time I heard them and inspired me to build my own with the assistance of the designer, John Wright. My magnum opus in an earlier life.

 

[Curvature]

Here is a graph from a study in 2017 that looked at the frequency content of something like 12000 popular music tracks.

So yes, there is 20-40hz content in music. How much? Well, it depends on many factors.

I find it odd to say "none of the major labels produce any music" either. Like, that would be super weird. They're definitely not high-passing all their albums at 40hz. Pretty much every headphone, even cheap IEMs, can reproduce 20hz just fine. If you're *deliberately* cutting low frequencies out of your music, you're damaging the experience for all headphone listeners. So if it is a practice, it produces bad recordings.

Not that bad recordings are uncommon.

Additionally, if you're talking about speaker setups, you need high output capacity at 40-100hz to properly reproduce anything with decent dynamic range. If you have that, you usually also have some capability below it as well. Setups that can't do 20hz at all are probably also going to compress at 40hz.

From the same paper, a few more useful charts:

1. High long-term average (very important to not mistake this for dynamics) standard deviations in the frequency extremes, but the midrange tends to be consistent.
2. Music with "percussive" elements corresponds to the previous chart, and can in fact be grouped.
3. The groups show certain tendencies in spectral distribution. In the conclusions, the writers state that these groups are not related to the stylistic conventions of genre, but to the "percussiveness". Tracks that feature heavy, prominent use of percussion are more related to each other from a spectral perspective than a generic perspective.

To somewhat loop it back to the original question: just like listener preferences, music falls into groups. Some shows a lot of bass, some not. Should your soundsystem be able to reproduce everything in the spectrum? Should it emphasize higher bass bands to the exclusion of the lower ones? The latter is easier to do, and cheaper. The former has no real limit, and gets less and less practical as you raise the bar—5Hz! 125dB! etc.

Maybe the answer here, if one is looking for a scientific-validated optimized answer, is preference studies regarding the bottom bass limit in systems. I'd guess preferences will sort of plateau once the system can readily produce 30-40Hz. But maybe I'd be wrong. Either way 40Hz at a good SPL is cheaply had these days.

 

[Curvature]

Content below 40Hz doesn't really have much in it, it's just air, pressure, rumbling. There's no harmonic content, no texture, no transients. It's absolutely not essential for any kind of music and not relevant for 99% of the listeners out there.

Tonal perception starts to collapse around 15Hz, not 40Hz.

 

[Sancus]

This is a really old thread necro, but I don't really see much point in worrying about what specific frequency your system should go down to anymore. The reality is that getting good low bass requires a system that is probably going to provide decent 20-30hz anyways.

If you get 20hz from a big giant single sub that isn't even properly room corrected, you're much worse off than the person with 3 tiny subs that only play to 30hz with any volume but has them perfectly setup with Multi-Sub Optimizer.

Just use decently sized subs and any multi-sub setup will give sufficient bass for music. And if you don't have any subs, well, unless you have something special like the D&D 8C you probably can't properly optimize your low bass anyhow.

 

[Oddball]

View attachment 495073
View attachment 495075

Those peaks don't look really pretty despite the overall presentation that is really impressive. But might be just me...

 

[gubelmo]

Greetings to all,
Sorry for the English but I use the automatic translation from Italian.

I've been following for a long time but I don't write much.
I only bring my personal experience.
I have a room dedicated to Hifi only of 35 square meters with professional acoustics Treatment and RT 0.20 from 130hz up,
Constant. Active ATC SCM150 speakers and listening even at very high volumes.
A few months ago to try I added only one SVS SB16 ultra subwoofer, calibrated with REW and DIRAC.

In my room The Atc limit at 40hz linear and the sub only works from 20 to 35 hz.
Well, the difference is very important and completes the sound in an unexpected way. The perception of other frequencies also changes a lot and the sound is much more balanced and complete.
Of course, an acoustically suitable environment and a system and speakers of absolute quality are essential, even as a subwoofer. If this quality is not there, it is better to avoid subwoofers and limit the response to 40/50 hz to avoid rumbles and very confused sounds on the bass.

 

[FireEmblem]

This is almost entirely narrow minded bollox IME.
What you write may be true about pop music but there is a lot of other music too. Admittedly pop probably is the majority of listeners, but certainly not 99%.
Getting the lowest octave in good quality has always been difficult and expensive, but it was certainly possible, and happening over 50 years ago IME. Not very good from LP a bit better from tape R to R back then but there were speakers that could do it, The IMF TLS80 were the best I heard.
One of my favourite recordings, Elgar's "Dream of Gerontius" Boult and LPO has organ pedal notes in the final "softly and gently" which make a huge emotional impact, true, most hifi owners will indeed have never experienced it but that does NOT mean it didn't exist on recordings 50 years ago, nor that it is not worth reproducing, it is very important, as it is in many types of music, if not most of the popular bands of my youth.

What I wrote is by any means not limited to pop music. The point was that people back then couldn't really largely play back that low end and engineers for the same reason didn't really bother with 'getting it right'.

What you see are leftovers, similiar to someone hanging a picture into the art gallery where modern critics stand in front of for hours, debating about the depth and meaning behind it, while the artist in reality just spontaneously painted that on a sunny afternoon without much thought, not even considering it as one of his prime works.

I'm not surprised though, that this statement doesn't find much positive resonance in an audiophile forum..

 

[dagfinn]

What I wrote is by any means not limited to pop music. The point was that people back then couldn't really largely play back that low end and engineers for the same reason didn't really bother with 'getting it right'.

What you see are leftovers, similiar to someone hanging a picture into the art gallery where modern critics stand in front of for hours, debating about the depth and meaning behind it, while the artist in reality just spontaneously painted that on a sunny afternoon without much thought, not even considering it as one of his prime works.

I'm not surprised though, that this statement doesn't find much positive resonance in an audiophile forum..

Interesting thread, I think there's a lot of misunderstanding going on regarding the arguments.



Yeah, but a lot of modern music is made by anyone and their grandmother who started out making music 2 years ago. 16 year olds land hits on Spotify through Tiktok and Social Media. Chances are very high, they don't know too much about mixing and simply didn't remove that frequency because they didn't even know it's there and couldn't hear it, just like 99% of the rest of the world.



Everyone who went to a cinema has heard it, in a much more powerful manner than any home setup could ever provide. That low end is great for cinema, soundtracks and trailer music that is supposed to be listened to at the theather, but has not much purpose outside of that. In musical compositions it will only consume a lot of headroom for almost nobody being able to hear it anyways.

All the information that's supposed to create energy, where the bass and kick shines, is higher than 40Hz. The attack transient is what mainly determines how loud and impactful we perceive something like a kick, and the attack transient is <0.1-0.5ms and way higher than 40Hz.




Perhaps for the same reason as #1, but from the other side: Audio engineering and all of that was still in very early development back then. People knew not as much as we know today. And speaker systems back then weren't even remotely as good as today in producing these low frequencies.

Content below 40Hz doesn't really have much in it, it's just air, pressure, rumbling. There's no harmonic content, no texture, no transients. It's absolutely not essential for any kind of music and not relevant for 99% of the listeners out there.

What subwoofers do what most people probably mix up with what they think feels better, is amplifying important low frequencies that we're also able to hear without a sub.

It's the 50-150Hz region where a lot of lowend is determined, that is now amplified by the subwoofer and can really put pressure into the room, which is of course fun to experience.

What a load os BS. You seriously don't know anything about what you're talking about. I wonder why you try.

 

[FireEmblem]

What a load os BS. You seriously don't know anything about what you're talking about. I wonder why you try.

Great argument, you really convinced me here. So much knowledge in a single post, I'm impressed.