Lets assume Im the only guy who will ever listen to this system.
Or lets say its just me and my buddies who are all in the same age group i.e. 55-70
Ive been reading up on how the human ear changes with age and so decided to do some tests. We found that all the people over the age off 55 could not hear anything over 14,000 Hz. Where as the kids and grand kids had no problem hearing even 18,000 Hz. Or more.
Samsung have this tech in their phones called Adapt sound. Where it plays a series of tones and based on your age and what your ears can pickup it creates a profile. The profile boosts all points past the point you can hear. The music does sound better. But if you do a freq test. You still cant hear the freqs past a certain point.
My quandry is
a. Do I build my system to just ignore all freq past 14K because thats all me and my buddies can hear.
or
b. Do I build a system that works like adapt sound which boosts freq above 14K
I know its a kinda pointless question. Which is why Ive stuck it in the everything else forum. But would still like you inputs.
Or lets say its just me and my buddies who are all in the same age group i.e. 55-70
Ive been reading up on how the human ear changes with age and so decided to do some tests. We found that all the people over the age off 55 could not hear anything over 14,000 Hz. Where as the kids and grand kids had no problem hearing even 18,000 Hz. Or more.
Samsung have this tech in their phones called Adapt sound. Where it plays a series of tones and based on your age and what your ears can pickup it creates a profile. The profile boosts all points past the point you can hear. The music does sound better. But if you do a freq test. You still cant hear the freqs past a certain point.
My quandry is
a. Do I build my system to just ignore all freq past 14K because thats all me and my buddies can hear.
or
b. Do I build a system that works like adapt sound which boosts freq above 14K
I know its a kinda pointless question. Which is why Ive stuck it in the everything else forum. But would still like you inputs.
Just build the best speaker you possibly can and then buy decent hearing aides, I can't hear much above 14k now but my grandkids certainly can and apparently the cat can hear 40k
There are scientific studies which show that audio that retains inaudible high-frequency components has an advantage in terms of inducing a relaxed attentional state in the listener.
Such studies relate to the inaudible sound components (above 20 kHz) that are cut off in conventional low-resolution audio but are present in high-resolution audio.
The participants do not distinguish between the excerpts played in terms of sound quality, but a subjective rating of pleasantness after listening is higher for the excerpt with high-frequency components than for the other excerpt.
I wonder if the conclusions of the studies could in any way be extended to the situation which you describe? 🤔
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28203213/
Such studies relate to the inaudible sound components (above 20 kHz) that are cut off in conventional low-resolution audio but are present in high-resolution audio.
The participants do not distinguish between the excerpts played in terms of sound quality, but a subjective rating of pleasantness after listening is higher for the excerpt with high-frequency components than for the other excerpt.
I wonder if the conclusions of the studies could in any way be extended to the situation which you describe? 🤔
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28203213/
This brings up a matter I have never seen addressed, namely does filtering out HF above a given individual's hearing range affect the perception of transient attack in the same way as not being able to hear a difference if it is still present? Fourier analysis tells us that the rise time of a transient's leading edge depends upon high frequencies, theoretically to infinity.
At 61 I can hear up to 15kHz, having zealously protected my ears since teenage, but few HF drivers roll off at 14kHz so if I were you I'd simply build a 'normal' system. If you want to play, buy a cheap graphic equaliser or play for free with a computer source and EQ to test your perception of the sound. 14kHz is still very respectable and I doubt that there is a huge amount of information up there, with the exception of the audibly questionable effect on transients. Ultimately there are far more important matters to be concerned with. On a scale of 1-10 I would put your dilemma at about 50th...
At 61 I can hear up to 15kHz, having zealously protected my ears since teenage, but few HF drivers roll off at 14kHz so if I were you I'd simply build a 'normal' system. If you want to play, buy a cheap graphic equaliser or play for free with a computer source and EQ to test your perception of the sound. 14kHz is still very respectable and I doubt that there is a huge amount of information up there, with the exception of the audibly questionable effect on transients. Ultimately there are far more important matters to be concerned with. On a scale of 1-10 I would put your dilemma at about 50th...
Your ear-brain will compensate for age loss to a certain extent. I would say that not until you experience a treble loss in real life, there is no reason to do any adjustments to a "linear" reproduction system. Once you dont hear the crickets at all you might want to try a little addition to the highs in your system to see if you can beat reality 😉
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I've also read that high frequencies can produce combination tones whose frequencies are the difference between the frequencies of the real tones.
The difference tones, being lower in frequency than the real tones, are audible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combination_tone
Don't be blinded by the numbers. 10k to 20k is just one octave of the 10 octaves in the audio band.
Jan
Jan
"Can hear"? Or "Can hear in context"? Do you like to listen to tones? Or speech/music?
This is me (in violet) and my dad (in black); he's about 78 in this graph.
Clearly he tests as "can hear 8kHz". But at 95 db down from a teen, 65dB down from his midrange.
Any 100-1kHz tone will mask the >2kHz hearing.
Also note 40dB/octave slope. You don't want to try to apply a 40dB/oct boost.