Well that completely mistates my argument and doesn't follow at all. We don't actually hear "hear" very well below 40 Hz, its more like we feel sounds in this frequency range. In fact it is possible to trick the hearing mechanism into thinking its hearing frequencies this low when in fact there is no air pressure modulation at all. At any rate, music has no bearing what-so-ever on our hearing ability. Man did not evolve listening to music. Over the multi-million years of human evolution, music has been around for what maybe .01% of the time?
Well, the argument based on HF acoustical attenuation appears weak, considering that 15khz will only attenuate about 3.27db traveling 10 meters through 20C atmosphere at 50% RH. 10 meters is certainly more than a normal listening distance for a home stereo setup.
Thats probably correct, but we see it differently. To me that's a lot of loss over such a short distance. By the time a tiger was within 10 meters you were dead. We needed to hear things a lot further away than that and above 10 kHz was not going to help. Also, 50% RH is rather low and the absorption rises dramatically with humidity.
You argued like this a couple of times now but I still don't understand it. Sound below 40Hz is part of music, so is frequency content beyond 10kHz. Don't think it is obsessing "with the minor things".
Best, Markus
Funny
I usually say "dont listen so much, FEEL the music"
But regarding bass notes especially, I actually prefer to just HEAR the notes
If I was in a band, Im sure I would ask the bass player to turn it down a bit
Its simply not natural if bass is that much dominating, as much as if it wasnt there at all
One of the very tricky aspects in hifi has always seemed to reproduce the natural crisp and airy sound of acoustic bass, an instrument with monster acoustics and finesse
The finesse of violins and piano have ralisticly never really been in reach, to most
But they seems to be now, which really is a new world of sound, at least to me
I usually say "dont listen so much, FEEL the music"
But regarding bass notes especially, I actually prefer to just HEAR the notes
If I was in a band, Im sure I would ask the bass player to turn it down a bit
Its simply not natural if bass is that much dominating, as much as if it wasnt there at all
One of the very tricky aspects in hifi has always seemed to reproduce the natural crisp and airy sound of acoustic bass, an instrument with monster acoustics and finesse
The finesse of violins and piano have ralisticly never really been in reach, to most
But they seems to be now, which really is a new world of sound, at least to me
Last edited:
I think the major point of view of gedlee is that human CAN NOT HEAR the sound frequencies above 10k and below 40Hz WELL ENOUGH, so we'd better not put too much energy on those two extremes when dealing with speaker designs. And the FACT above is nothing to do with the music contents.
😱 man, thats where the fun is, and problems, sure 😛
But even if it really would be true, then I certainly dont understand the huge and expencive effort with all these "subs" 😕
Sorry, but thats NOT where the problems are. But Yes, arguing about these details does seem to turn people on!
Last edited:
My point is simply that our hearing evolved to what it is virtually entirely without the presence of music. Thus the content of music has nothing what-so-ever to do with the evolution of our hearing. From an evolutionary standpoint our ears are ideal instrumments for localizing sounds in nature, mostly in the horizontal plane, but with a height resolution that is good in the forward direction, but pretty poor otherwise. This is entirely what one would expect of someone who uses his hearing dominately for hunting. Our hearing evolved entirely around this need and nothing else. Because of the high absorption of air above 10 kHz, frequencies up that high would not be a major benifit to this process for humans and so our hearing did not develop very well at those frequencies.
It is no coincidence that the smaller the animal and the closer-in its environment, the better its HF capability. It works for them!
Music evolved to fit into the existing capabilities of human hearing, not the other way arround.
I think our hearing has certain capabilities. It helped us to survive. Music is a cultural phenomenon. It uses the capabilities of our hearing. Frequencies beyond 40-10000 Hz ARE a vital part of music and movie sound. We might not hear frequencies below 40 Hz well but artists use them despite the fact. So an adequat frequency response is mandatory for accurate sound reproduction. It's not about how much can be omitted and still get the message through but how much to include to be as accurate as needed.
Best, Markus
Last edited:
Well, I have to point out, that POV is NOT mine.
I myself can hear above 10k and below 40 pretty well, so I've been quite busy on those 😀
Oh, OK. I get you! Yes indeed - the harmonic distortion at 10K or above is going to be awfully hard to hear. True enough. It's like the old test of how high can you hear a square wave? At some point in becomes indistinguishable from a sine wave. You just can't hear the harmonics any more.
Now if those tweeters are faithfully playing harmonics of distortion that come from somewhere upstream, that's a different problem....
I admit I have listened to a lot of different portable transistor radios
And sometimes it does surprice me how much of the music they actually reproduce
And just yesterday I listened to a youtube video of the Rubanoide
Through a poor PC speaker it actually seems possible to hear that the Rubanoide actually might sound special
Is it deception
YouTube - Transducteur Ã* ruban Janus50 (Reportage France 3)
Anyway, its a fun video, and a nice guy it seems
But note the funny attitude of TV speaker at the end
I can imagine hi is surpriced and confused
And sometimes it does surprice me how much of the music they actually reproduce
And just yesterday I listened to a youtube video of the Rubanoide
Through a poor PC speaker it actually seems possible to hear that the Rubanoide actually might sound special
Is it deception
YouTube - Transducteur Ã* ruban Janus50 (Reportage France 3)
Anyway, its a fun video, and a nice guy it seems
But note the funny attitude of TV speaker at the end
I can imagine hi is surpriced and confused
Last edited:
Oh, I think humans have made sounds/music from the very beginning
Drumming ceremonies have been very important in many cultures
Actually I dont think our hearing has evolved, but more likely degenerated
We dont depend so much on a sharp hearing to survive
But I do think we would have evolved into very poor behaving humans without the music or sound making
Maybe some are behaving so poorly because of no genuine sense of music, or music making
Regarding our hifi interest I believe we have made our own problem in making music listening into a purely intelectual process
Drumming ceremonies have been very important in many cultures
Actually I dont think our hearing has evolved, but more likely degenerated
We dont depend so much on a sharp hearing to survive
But I do think we would have evolved into very poor behaving humans without the music or sound making
Maybe some are behaving so poorly because of no genuine sense of music, or music making
Regarding our hifi interest I believe we have made our own problem in making music listening into a purely intelectual process
Last edited:
Not really the point is it? But the "as needed" part is important - above 10 kHz is not needed 😉 (don't quote me on that!). It's really about trade-offs, because no speaker is or ever will be perfect. Trading off important aspects for unimportant ones is not good engineering. Only a non-engineer thinks that we don't need to rank order the design parameters to get the best engineering compromise. The reason that my speakers sound good at such a low cost is because I make the right compromises. Why don't you own Klien and Hummel (or whatever), or Genelec? You know as well as I do, its because you can't afford them. Good design is not about absolutes of extremes, but value based compromises. While I like Ferraris, I don't respect their engineering because it is extreme. Extreme is easy. It's the NSX that I respect. A car every bit as good as a Ferrari, at a fraction of the price - now THATS impressive engineering!!
Exactly my point all along, we only differ on the order of priorities of certain aspects. To me the optimum compromise may vary depending on intended use and expectations of the listener.
Since when does HF start at 10kHz?
I believe part of the problem is with higher order harmonics but also what happen if a tweeter can't reproduce for eg. 2nd harmonics of 5 - 8kHz without distortion, not to mention the higher fundamentals? I also would think it is possible for HF above our hearing limits to still 'hurt' your ears. Every part of the signal chain must be able to reproduce the full audible freq spectrum with as little as possible distortion to get 'clean' (undistorted) sound. If not, I agree the system will sound better with rolled-off HF.
This may be true, but its not a major aspect of the compromises. Basically Hi-End or Pro are going to deal with the same compromises. Intended use is a bigger factor, but designing for "listener expectations" is simply pandering to the current market fads - its not "truth" or "accuracy".
You see, this is precisely my point. ALL studies of this have concluded that harmonic distortion is simply not a factor - why design for it?
- Status
- Not open for further replies.