Oh noes! PLEASE use the word hypothesis instead of theory. The scientific meaning of theory is very different from its meaning in ordinary speech, and that causes a lot of confusion.
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I'm not sure why I'm even posting this, but I'm somewhat disgusted with the recent personal attacks in the fullrange forum, so here goes:
As a professional research scientist for the last decade, I've come to question almost everything. Even in relatively well-behaved systems, data doesn't always mean what it is 'supposed' to. When there is a strong community-wide belief, it is very easy to interpret data as supporting the belief, even if it is wrong. I don't believe anyone using ANY evidence to unequivocally state as FACT anything involving human perception, including psycho-acoustic audio. I absolutely believe in creating testable hypotheses and then collecting and analysing data for the testing. I absolutely don't believe that all the diyaudioers that know way more than I do about audio have it all figured out. Be sceptical of absolute statements, even mine!
Enough of this... back to enjoying my hobby of making way less than perfect amps and speakers. Thanks for all the knowledge transfer from all the great diyaudio posters.
As a professional research scientist for the last decade, I've come to question almost everything. Even in relatively well-behaved systems, data doesn't always mean what it is 'supposed' to. When there is a strong community-wide belief, it is very easy to interpret data as supporting the belief, even if it is wrong. I don't believe anyone using ANY evidence to unequivocally state as FACT anything involving human perception, including psycho-acoustic audio. I absolutely believe in creating testable hypotheses and then collecting and analysing data for the testing. I absolutely don't believe that all the diyaudioers that know way more than I do about audio have it all figured out. Be sceptical of absolute statements, even mine!
Enough of this... back to enjoying my hobby of making way less than perfect amps and speakers. Thanks for all the knowledge transfer from all the great diyaudio posters.
Apparently not everyone interprets it the same as I always assumed those limits were meant to apply: not that we can hear from 20 to 20kHz, but that 20Hz is the frequency limit by which we can reasonably assume that we can no longer hear. And ditto by 20kHz. Hearing sensitivity curves seem to justify this take on the matter.
related: I'd like to know whether people who have "tested" their hearing to go way beyond 20kHz, as often reported on forums, could really tell if a tone there was in tune (say, was it same note as an octave lower rather than a sour note nearby?) or were they only hearing something else like maybe an amp or voice coil in distress? Wondering as an engineer, not as someone professing the pure glowof science, of course!
My point is rather that "perceptions" are "entangled" thus any "objective criterion" about a particular property selected from some "whole" does not and cannot make verifyable predictions about impression.
The list of visual and acoustical "illusions" is very long, but the impression is our personal reality. There is no other reality. The objective analysis of a observable event is sort of metaphysical reality but we do not hear that.
Applying objectivity, the task is a 1:1 map of an "original" sound field.
We can safely say, that is impossible but an approximation is possible.
However i maintain you won't hear the same symphony if you are in the concert hall wearing a swim suit or in a heavy metal performance wearing a tuxedo. Thus approximation is just a word, it is not science
The relevant question is not whether or not someone can hear a pure sine wave at a certain frequency, but whether they can detect the absence of audio above a certain frequency. These are two vastly different things, and the reason is masking. Music is very rarely composed of a pure sine wave.
I do not believe there is any meaningful information in that frequency range.
I was just curious if one could hear those frequencies or not.
My method was to compare a 15kHz sine wave with a square wave.
I used a specially created signal generator, a ribbon tweeter and switched between the two.
Yes I could hear a difference.
For a test I used a B&K 1/4" microphone Feeding a HP FFT analyzer.
There was only the 15kHz tone and harmonics leading me to believe I could hear at least the affect of the 45kHz 3rd harmonic.
Good point. But then you have an infinite number of different audio signals that might give different results in such a test.
I have been deeply involved in this hobby. Just imagine what could happen when you and your audio gangs hang around together for blind tests or whatever.
Here is an interesting question for you: Have you ever heard "silence"? I have not.
May be you know the answer why, but I feel the tendency of LF to be calming and HF to be fatiguing or even painful. It is the fatiguing nature of HF that makes its "existence" often easily detectable.
If you increase frequency repetitively, you will hear the same pattern (like the frequency is increasing) but it start to sound like it is not a sound, but you know that it is "in" your ears (or in your head).
I hope you can tell me why a HF tend to sound fatiguing. Is it their nature or naturally it is not, just when some physics phenomenon is occurring... (like harmonics)?
Remember white noise? We use it to detect if a system has some kind of NLD. In a good system, white noise sounds fine but in a bad system it "shreds" your ears. A "chalk on a white board" stuff (which may be a sign of non-flat FR).
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I've tested my hearing by pure tones, 1/3 octave noise and low pass filters on music. The results are about the same. At my age I top out around 13-14 kHz. I don't think I could ever hear up past 18k.
For me the important thing was could I tell if there was a low pass filter, or not, at a certain frequency. If not, I figured that what anything above that was useless to me.
For me the important thing was could I tell if there was a low pass filter, or not, at a certain frequency. If not, I figured that what anything above that was useless to me.
Another thing I wanted to say here...
Not sure which the OP meant, but indeed science commonly has two meanings, either the scientific method, or the findings of studies using that method. Many people hear about the more important and popular findings in the news all the time, yet have no clue what the scientific method is.
[pet peeve]You are way too generous to reporters on the types of scientific and engineering stories they write.[/pet peeve]
But I agree. Scientific literacy is pretty weak in the public at large, which is certainly frustrating.
Definitely a bit of both. And lets not talk about the media's 'reporting' of science.
I wasn't sure you were looking for an answer. But unfortunately your question looked so simple to me and I didn't want to insult you by giving simple answer 😛
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