Human frequency PERCEPTION range? (its not 20-20kHz)

[Ghoostknight]

Hello found these two quite interesting videos i wanted to share

Cool guy! he makes a lot of these edge-case videos, quite interesting stuff

personally i definitely feel 0-20Hz
and i also can hear a lowpass set at 20-22khz even tho my hearing range rolls off after 15khz

while science claims 20-20khz is our hearing range, our actual "perception" of different frequencys might be complete different

Whats your expierence or thoughts on this?

 

[Bmsluite]

I have the same thoughts. Just because I cannot hear it doesn't mean it's not physically affecting me.

I get a lot of flack for wanting my systems to hit super low and super high. Far beyond my hearing. Yet these systems are the ones that elicit the most awe in response when I play them for other people.

I have a Subwoofer in my office that has an f6 of 11 Hz. You can feel your clothes moving on your body. If course we cannot hear that but it certainly makes your hair stand up and the goosebumps appear.
.
A lot of music doesn't even contain sounds below 20 Hz. Some do though. You can find those songs.

Same thing with above 20khz. I cannot heat past 16500hz but I certainly know if it's playing above that. My home theater 3 ways hit super high. They create an excitement to the music that is not heard, only felt. My bedroom 3 way TL hits lower in the range but I had it roll off at 16khz. The excitement isn't there. It's a different feel. It's designed that way though as I'm listening to that before going to sleep every night.

I think the frequencies above and below our hearing are what can elicit the more intense emotional responses to music.

 

[Ghoostknight]

I think the frequencies above and below our hearing are what can elicit the more intense emotional responses to music.

i pretty much agree here, you are absolutely right that specific lows can give you goosebumps and other lets call em "effects" (feel relaxed/scary and stuff like that) probably more so then "audible" frequencys

i also noticed that binaural beats(actual monaural i think) like this: https://tidal.com/browse/track/272721900?u with very low frequencys mixed in work way better than the usual binaural beats stuff you can find on youtube

one of my goto albums for low testing: https://listen.tidal.com/album/25228417
or this funny song by nick cave: https://tidal.com/browse/track/64653804?u

really curious what supertweeters (or an extended response) and the right high-res files would do 🙂

 

[Dissident Sound]

you can definitely feel frequencies below what can be heard but it is not a pleasant feeling.

running fairly loud sinewave sweeps on my 18" TC Sounds LMS Ultra subwoofer when i went down to below the lowest frequency i could discern as an actual tone ( i think it was like 22 hz ) i was suddenly overcome with an extremely unpleasant sensation somewhere between what felt like starting to pass out and wanting to vomit.

but it was a pure sinewave on a very linear driver in a double walled sealed box so it was basically just silent pressure which was very confusing for the brain because it was receiving inputs from the senses but without anything to anchor them to in terms of tone

i never experienced those unpleasant sensations with the same subwoofer using real music even though a lot of that music went way lower than the frequency i tested but it was always reproduced alongside louder audible harmonics that allowed the brain to register the pressure as part of the overall sound

whereas as a pure sinewave the brain didn't understand what the body was experiencing which can have the effect of making you physically ill

as for HF be glad you can still hear them, also apparently young women can hear higher frequencies than men.

 

[ejp]

If we couldn’t perceive frequencies below 1z, tuning would be impossible.

And why are all those organs built with 16Hz and even 8Hz stops?

 

[Dissident Sound]

And why are all those organs built with 16Hz and even 8Hz stops?

the lower the frequency the higher the SPL required to "hear" it

by "hear" i mean perceive it as SOUND and not merely FEEL it as pressure

around 20 hz is when things start to get sketchy in the sense that the brain starts to have trouble recognizing the pressure as sound - i tried to explore whether i could hear below 20 hz but i think i aborted the experiment at around 22 hz due to feeling sick

you will need a POWERFUL and CLEAN subwoofer to test this.

but i can definitely see the case for designing a system to hit 16 hz because it's possible some people can hear 16 hz at some SPL levels ...

but to go even lower is a waste of money. yes you can feel something at lower frequencies but i'm not sure you want to feel it and if you want to feel explosions in movies you can mount some bass shakers to the sofa.

 

[ejp]

it's possible some people can hear 16 hz at some SPL levels ...

Not ‘possible’. Fact, for most people. Walk into a cathedral and wait till the organist lets rip after the service. You’ll hear it all right. And you won’t feel sick either.

 

[davidsrsb]

That we can feel below 20 Hz, maybe not actually hearing it is definitely true.
Sensing above 20 KHz is much more controversial as many demonstrations have been shown to be potentially flawed. It is hard to test without transducers making <20 KHz sub-harmonics.

 

[ElArte]

while science claims 20-20khz is our hearing range, our actual "perception" of different frequencys might be complete different

Whats your expierence or thoughts on this?

Humans are distributed along a bell curve in many respects.
When general statements are made, they refer to individuals who fall 1 standard deviation away from the mean; not to outliers.

 

[MarcelvdG]

If we couldn’t perceive frequencies below 1z, tuning would be impossible.

Aren't you mixing up frequencies with frequency differences?

And why are all those organs built with 16Hz and even 8Hz stops?

If I remember correctly, Brian Moore wrote that there is no real lower limit, but pitch perception gets very poor below about 16 Hz and you need very high sound pressure levels to hear anything.

Most organ sounds have lots of harmonics, so it could well be that you don't hear the fundamental but only the harmonics of 8 Hz organ sounds (which most pipe organs can't produce anyway).

 

[Audio>X]

personally i definitely feel 0-20Hz
and i also can hear a lowpass set at 20-22khz even tho my hearing range rolls off after 15khz

while science claims 20-20khz is our hearing range, our actual "perception" of different frequencys might be complete different

Whats your expierence or thoughts on this?

This is an interesting topic.
Going back some time when testing my ears, I found that although I could hear 16Khz as clear as day,18Khz [with enough level] was something that
I could only sense as an ear feeling, but couldn't hear as a sound.
As I understand it there are two kinds of HF hearing loss, of course usually associated with age.
1. An unfortunate total loss above a certain frequency [ like a 'brick-wall filter' ].
2. Being a situation where reduced sensitivity exists but perception still exists when given relative gain/level increase is applied.
This is why I am a proponent of Super Tweeters and what are 'technically' non-flat speakers for so many people of type 2.
There is no shame in building a speaker that effectively brings back to your ears what you've been 'missing' > like detail & clarity.
Such speakers could sound Bright & Harsh to other people > but should that really matter?
One thing that 'gets me' about single-full-range-driver aficionados is that so many throw their hands up in the air and say >
"I'm deaf anyway, so I don't care about the missing high frequencies of the driver". That strikes me as foolish without first trying the addition
of a high efficiency tweeter/Super Tweeter. They truly may not be aware of the detail they are missing. Very high frequencies contain vital harmonics.
I designed a Super Tweeter using a Piezo + transformer that projects much higher output level at very high frequencies than a regular tweeter/speaker.
Here is the project >

• 
  Thread watched

A TRUE Piezo Super Tweeter (piezo tweeter revisited)

 

[Dissident Sound]

Humans are distributed along a bell curve in many respects.
When general statements are made, they refer to individuals who fall 1 standard deviation away from the mean; not to outliers.

good point. imagine saying that humans have a height of 1 meter 60 centimeters because that's the average of all men, women and children from all around the world. we can of course clearly see that people have different heights - but it is not so easy to tell that they also have different hearing ability, unless they are completely deaf.

 

[curt_stranger]

It seems like they're saying these different phenomena are all just different frequencies of the same thing, which feels misleading to me That's true for things on the electromagnetic spectrum (radio --> light --> radiation), but sound (what they're referring to with the 20-20kHz) is specifically air pressure waves. Humans can perceive a 10kHz sound pressure wave, but not a 10kHz electromagnetic (radio) wave. You can't somehow increase the frequency of a sound wave to turn it into visible light, or vice versa. We've known about gravitational waves for a while but only started detecting them about 10 years ago.

I'm not sure what my point is, exactly, but I think it's worth pointing out that light and sound are completely different things, not different frequencies of the same thing.

 

[Audio>X]

Humans can perceive a 10kHz sound pressure wave, but not a 10kHz electromagnetic (radio) wave.

A 10Khz 'Radio wave' is actually a 10Khz MODULATION of a much higher frequency.
10Khz as an electromagnetic frequency can't transmit effectively further than a cm or two.
A white light source modulating at 10Khz is seen to the eye as white light > NOT a strobe.

 

[Mark Tillotson]

10Khz as an electromagnetic frequency can't transmit effectively further than a cm or two.

Certainly can. You do need a big antenna though as the wavelength is 30km. Near field transmission works over distances comparable to the size of the conductor, so 2m of wire at 10kHz can transmit over a metre or two, just as mains hum can be picked up everywhere inside a building with mains wiring installed. All frequencies of electromagnetic wave can be perceived if powerful enough to heat tissue (or cause corona discharge or ionization!). The same heating effect applies to ultrasound, but normally skin-contact is needed for that.

You need to be clear about mechanism of perception - some mechanisms are definitely not hearing, i.e. don't involve the organ of Corti.

 

[ejp]

Aren't you mixing up frequencies with frequency differences?

No. A frequency difference is still a frequency. That’s what IMD is all about, and superheterodyning.

 

[franzm]

10Khz as an electromagnetic frequency can't transmit effectively further than a cm or two.

That's why it's used for communication with submersed submarines. ;-)

 

[MarcelvdG]

No. A frequency difference is still a frequency. That’s what IMD is all about, and superheterodyning.

Maybe you use a different definition of "perception" than I do, otherwise your reply makes no sense.

 

[curt_stranger]

All frequencies of electromagnetic wave can be perceived if powerful enough to heat tissue (or cause corona discharge or ionization!).

That's a good point: we can perceive EM radiation with our bodies if it's powerful enough at a given frequency.

 

[ejp]

Maybe you use a different definition of "perception" than I do, otherwise your reply makes no sense.

The reply that you quoted was about frequency difference, not perception. You were asserting a non-existent distinction between frequency and frequency difference, and it is that which doesn’t make sense.