Hello, not sure this is the right place to ask this question.
I've just build my small two-way speakers, and while testing it, have discovered that I don't hear any signal beyond around 13 kHz. In addition, not many musical instruments go beyond 5 kHz.
Why worry then about higher frequencies that are either not heard or not even there to start with?
Thanks, h.
I've just build my small two-way speakers, and while testing it, have discovered that I don't hear any signal beyond around 13 kHz. In addition, not many musical instruments go beyond 5 kHz.
Why worry then about higher frequencies that are either not heard or not even there to start with?
Thanks, h.
A tweeter that drops off above 10k is quite noticeable on most music,
at least for people with reasonably intact hearing.
Here is a paper on the topic of the spectra of musical instruments.
There's life above 20 kilohertz! A survey of musical instrument spectra to 102.4 kHz
> I don't hear any signal beyond around 13 kHz.
Your tweeter may not be as good as it claims to be.
However I know (from many tweeters and also audiometry) that my hearing now declines badly past 2KHz, at near 18dB/octave, and I will never hear 13KHz again (in wideband music). (My father has less.)
Your tweeter may not be as good as it claims to be.
However I know (from many tweeters and also audiometry) that my hearing now declines badly past 2KHz, at near 18dB/octave, and I will never hear 13KHz again (in wideband music). (My father has less.)
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The Harmonics of a musical instrument go waaaay beyond 5Khz and it is important to reproduce most of them, or you will hear a distorted version of the instrument. If your hearing stops at 13Khz (probably mine too, I am 62) you still need to reproduce all of that.
You "need" not as it is your choice how much you want to reproduce of the original sound. For speech, it makes little sense to reproduce above 10KHz. But, if you want music instruments to sound as close to reality as possible (the audiophile philosophy), you need to reproduce the high frequencies as well because the high frequencies "color" the sound though you hear little of that frequency on its own.
I have joined the club that does not hear much above 12KHz. It means that for full-range speakers, I worry less if they give full level at 18KHz.
Audiophile gear improve fast but our physiology only very slowly.
There might be a reason not mentioned yet: human hearing is nonlinear IOW produces its "own" distortion that usually escapes being noticed. So if an audio spectrum is filtered, the IMD spectrum produced by the hearing system will be different from that, produced with the unfiltered spectrum. The difference can be within the region of maximum sensitivity so could be audible. That implies someone with hearing limited to say 4 KHz still can hear the difference between a (for instance 8 KHz) low pass filtered signal and the unfiltered signal.
Isn't it correct that the sound produced by a musical instrument reaches the recording device as an interference pattern of all the available harmonics? By this time, the higher frequency harmonics, say above 12 kHz, have already contributed to the lower part of the spectrum through interference. Why would we keep (or attempt to reproduce) the higher frequencies (above the 12 kHz) in the recording (in case we don't hear them)?
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Wave propagation in air is linear up to rather high sound levels, so the various waves do not interact in that sense. The presence of one frequency does not change any others except by linear superposition (adding or subtracting).
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By the time one starts listening to it the full experience might not be reached.
Good question, you are thinking
How do you think the higher harmonics interfere, what would show on an oscilloscope screen?Isn't it true in general that interference (or is it superposition?) of two different harmonics can produce a frequency and side bands that are much lower than one of the harmonics?
Meaning we might not hear the higher of the harmonics but we hear its influence on the result through interference.
You do hear a 15 khz second harmonic at 7.5 khz, your brain can fill the missing information. This is independent of having a 15khz resolution or not, it should be in the recording.
But the bandwidth on the other hand is very important, suppose a -3 db at 10 khz , you will have a decreasing response and higher THD way below in the listening range.
One thing for sure is that the 8khz + I would say in audio is way over rated.... most of the good stuff happens between 100 - 900, 2khz are the voice harmonics, and then high pitch instrument almost all stop at 5khz in normal music scores, then 8khz has many harmonics, over this is it mostly ambiance, like one said, organ high pitch notes, high hat, soprano trumpet etc and only their harmonics.
so to recap, in good system you should be able to tell how big is the recording room if it applies, where the walls are, distances between instruments from the delay and image, and hear the room resonance, 'air' is the generic term for that. Nevertheless a system with no 'air' can sound very good and relax.
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I wonder if hearing loss low pass filter causes phase distortion......
Yes and no. Yes, there is phase-shift at the corner. No, because audio phase-shift is not very significant, and NO! because when hearing loss gets bad you just can't hear the upper harmonics at all to know what shifted.
"20KHz" is buzz-word. Before that it was 15KC. Before that 7KC was considered wide-band. I have been quite happy (in my youth) with systems which did not throw much 7KHz to where I was listening. It adds sizzle to disco cymbals. I (used to) notice the lack in a few orchestral passages. A significant loss was the squeedle synth passage in The Dead's Unbroken Chain. But most >7KHz is not *musically* essential.
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