Haha, such jollity......nope. 😉
The real problem with digital is straight out of the camera it looks dead, and needs a certain degree of ‘embalming’ to look any good. Trouble is, where does it start and when does it ever end? The beauty of analog film is the aesthetic is built into the emulsion itself, that is:- what you see is what you get, and conversely it is much much harder to get a good result with a seeing feeling eye. Every now and then I buy myself a disposable film camera to remind myself what real photography is all about. Obviously, there are parallels here with excessive digital audio editing, and think we can agree on that.
Your comments did make me laugh though 😛 ToS
20kHz is a wave with a length of 1,7 cm, 3/4", in air. Any transducer with a circumpherence of this wavelength, that is a cirkel with a radius of .5 cm, starts to beam above this wavelength.
In order to have a decent radiation pattern above 20 kHz, your driver should be smaller than this. Everything bigger will push out 20 kHz in a laser beam like pattern.
Look at the dispersion pattern (Ed, sorry, but you know what I mean) of your standard 1 inch tweeter, and it becomes glaringly obvious that even at 10 kHz, you will be down quite a lot at your favorite listening position, unless you are facing your speakers head on.
All this without even mentioning that these high frequencies get attenuated by travelling through air.
In view of all these technical challenges, evolution has created your ear such, that anything above 20kHz is not registered in any significant way.
In order to have a decent radiation pattern above 20 kHz, your driver should be smaller than this. Everything bigger will push out 20 kHz in a laser beam like pattern.
Look at the dispersion pattern (Ed, sorry, but you know what I mean) of your standard 1 inch tweeter, and it becomes glaringly obvious that even at 10 kHz, you will be down quite a lot at your favorite listening position, unless you are facing your speakers head on.
All this without even mentioning that these high frequencies get attenuated by travelling through air.
In view of all these technical challenges, evolution has created your ear such, that anything above 20kHz is not registered in any significant way.
^ One of the many realities mentioned here Archimago's Musings: MUSINGS: Do we "need" those >20kHz ultrasonic frequencies for high-fidelity audio? linked by Syn08.
How many times do I have to ask you why doesn't the same hold for everyone? It is all a personal opinion, possibly preference, and/or biased in some way valid for one person.
Now I'm totally puzzled.
It is exactly my position that everyone's opinion should be seen as exactly that.
Have you ever noticed that I'd demanded hard evidence from controlled listening tests if someone (like you for example) posts negative results from sighted listening?
Accordingly I don't demand hard evidence from controlled listening test if someone posts positive results from sighted listening.
Otoh, you're quite regularly applying double standards to reported sighted listening tests in dependence of the results.
Could it be that you don't realize it? (not a rhetorical question)
This might be of interest to some - the use of beamed ultransound to create sound at a distance (edit: Ah, I see Demian got there first)
Sound from ultrasound - Wikipedia
Scott continually asks this same question & doesn't accept the answer he gets from you or me - that both types of listening (on forums) should be considered of equal merit (or demerit?). He seems to want to have his cake & eat it too? What he really wants to argue is that forum run ABX testing is superior to sighted listening & should be treated as such but he can't bring himself to admit this bias.
The man doth protest too much, methinks 😉
Last edited:
Well y’all have your own personal brand of ‘funny’ 😀
ASMR was what I came up with in researching the phenomenon.....pretty sure that’s it.
What technically triggers it is the question......when the system is dialed for this result I wouldn’t change anything except maybe to be able to increase dynamics (more headroom) but that’s just a equipment limitation.
Mmerrill: there is a small problem, at least of my experiments with ultrasound, the more correctly in technical terms the experiment was done, the less was heard as an intermodulation product, ending with a completely null result in my last experiment that I have shown here with measurements.
You might want to stress a little more the potential for damage.......especially for us old folks who think oh I’ll hear 20k if I keep turning it up!
Good thing is my spare tweeters were in better shape than the ones I was using!
Good thing is my spare tweeters were in better shape than the ones I was using!
I'm most interested in a test that 'simulates' what I experience in real life, so I can relate and then have exact answer to phenomena i'm experiencing. The test file is, i don't understand why, tend to be 'perceived' as lower quality than what i usually hear. Also I'm not familiar with the sound of saxophone. But from 'musical perspective' i found that certain sax sound in mustgo1.wav sounded more natural, even tho I believe most people will prefer the sound of mustgo3.wav, just like in real phenomenon. But this is with cheap speaker which i think is incapable of 20kHz and beyond. But who knows. Later I will use my reference speaker.
Something similar like the above, such as "Sure you can hear differences if your system is low quality", is why i'm not enthusiastic with joining the test. But i usually downloaded your test files for my own listening test in the future, at least for my own benefit (thanks a lot!)
We aren't sure what Bob is experiencing. You mentioned that he might just found the correctness that we, most of us, might have been used to. He mentioned he moved around his head like Stevie Wonder as if he's painting with his ears. Better description of the phenomenon will let us know what's really going on. I have been trying to correlate phenomenon with technical parameters for years. It started with the ability to describe the phenomena.
I just want to stress the fact the responses I described are innate, as in I have no thought process involved....it just happens and it’s definately tied to a certain state of tune. And there’s no particular ‘sound quality’ it’s more a point where the music engulfs you. (If that makes any sense!)
This all probably sounds pretty wack but it’s just so intense and amazing I had to at least attempt to figure it out even at the expense of ridicule.
I do appreciate the interest,
Bob
Last edited:
Most folks here can hear the 13,000, 14,000 hertz tones.
Some even hear something perceived as noise not a sine wave from the 20,000 hertz tone.
Everyone can hear both difference tones. It is just a matter of setting the level high enough to hear it and not so high to strain anything.
Listening was done on a pair of JBL Media 100 computer speakers.
Yes, beware of the volume level (20/22)......the magic smoke has relegated me to my spare tweeters!
I thought if I turned it up enough I’d hear 20k again.........odd part is it smoked at a lower volume than my max listening volume.
I suppose all the energy focused at once was more than it’s little VC could handle! 😀
Oddly I remember blowing a hole in an infinity EMIT trying exactly the same back in 1996. Back then 18k was definately my limit.
Are you sure you are sending a clean signal from your speakers. Something like attached. Are you sure you do not have an intermodulation between R channel and crosstalk from L channel, that would create audible 2kHz. Your PC card is OK, right? Have you measured electrical and acoustical output? I can "hear" something on a 20+22kHz twintone from notebook + headphones, because notebook sound chip creates some digital trash. After switching to a moderate external DAC there is nothin audible.
Attachments
Besides hobby, I think it is the challenge to get the 'holly grail' that has motivated me to design better amplifier by perception. I have been done with speaker design. Now I'm with amplifier design. Later on I will figure out what the fuss is about with DAC.
Sound quality has some facets, each can be described with words, each can be described with Physics (there are a few i'm not so sure about the causes, but i know how to work around it). As with your case, do you enjoy the system with any kind of music? Sepultura? Metallica? Spoken words? Violin? Electric guitar?
A quality 'facet' that often amazes me is the separation of instruments and sounds. Instrument separation is easier than vocal/human separation. With instrument separation you can pick any instrument and enjoy it while focusing out the other sounds. Vocal separation can be scary, as if you can see one is standing behind the other. In smaller 'event' it is like you have described where backing vocals suddenly becomes clear and involving.
Last edited:
Warnings hardly ever work for me.....I’m more of a touch the hot stove kinda feller.😛.
It’s all good, I was just surprised how little time/power it took.
I commend your efforts,
It’s funny you mention different types of music because along the way I ended up with different states of tune that worked well with the particular music I like (mostly blues based) and found it suffered in others.....but when I’ve got it dialed in to this point where the music takes control I notice it crosses over to other genres much better.
The vocals are what I gauge my tuning by and again when this point is met the
Vocals layer up and become enveloping.....it’s just so hard to describe.
Edit.....this is not the ramblings of some newbie hearing good sound for the first time,
I’ve been exposed to many systems that I found extraordinary and never have come across this ‘perception’ before.
Last edited:
- Status
- Not open for further replies.