Which is the highest frequency that You can hear? Options

[Emon]

Tested myself using my EMU 1212m, the software has a signal generator. Could hear 20 KHz just fine at 26 years of age.

[saratoga]

22khz, 23 y/o

Sennheiser HD201

You might want to try repeating that with a 96kHz test tone (and a sound card that natively clocks at 96k). I suspect that a lot of systems won't reproduce a 22kHz tone correctly at 44.1khz (IIRC flash runs at this).

[hlloyge]

Somewhere between 16.5 and 17 kHz, 37 yrs old.

[[JAZ]]

15Khz here. Looks like my hearing has worsened these last years.

Age: 32
System: Windows 7, integrated laptop sound (HD audio, codec ALC268), configured for 24bits 44Khz, 50% Volume, and Sony MDR-7505 closed headphones.
I hear 12Khz loud, 14Khz less loud, and 15Khz even less. At 16Khz could hear a wisper only if increasing the volume at 100%, so that does not count.

I used to hear up to 17Khz.

[C.R.Helmrich]

Is it possible to produce some samples of intentionally aliased high-frequency tones, so people don't mistakenly believe they have super-hearing?

Not really, they sound exactly like real high-frequency tones, just at a lower frequency.

If you want to double check, you can either use foobar with a good resampler to your card's native sampling rate (if needed), or just record the tones and check in an audio editor if the frequencies changed.

Or drown any aliasing tones in noise. Which is why I created the test file of this post. With that file I can hear up to 16 - 16.5 kHz (Sennheiser HD 590). With the files from the web site, see my earlier post.

Chris

This post has been edited by C.R.Helmrich: Feb 26 2012, 12:23

[randal1013]

i can definitely hear 17khz. 18 and up i hear *something* but im not sure if it's the frequency or other junk.


for those keeping track: 28 years old

This post has been edited by randal1013: Feb 26 2012, 12:49

[2012]

Had to download the files and upsample to 48000 (The sample rate OSS4 vmix is using).

I voted 16 although I think I heard something once at 17.

I'm in my late twenties.
Should I be worried?

[Reiginsei]

I can't hear anything past 14 kHz.

But on heartest.exe from http://advsys.net/ken/utils.htm I can hear up to 16.5 kHz. So which one is correct?

[greynol]

I'm glad to see that I can still faintly hear 17kHz. With higher frequencies I "feel" pressure and at the highest frequency I hear a faint buzzing tone which is clearly an artifact from my system.

I went back to generate a sweep at my card's native sample rate, and can hear just beyond 17kHz. Anything higher than that disappears and I am not getting any sense of pressure.

Whether this pressure is placebo related or not, I can't be sure. Pressing a button to hear a tone is hardly a double-blind process. There are clicks when the samples start and stop which could probably be eliminated by creating ones that ramp up and down.

This post has been edited by greynol: Feb 26 2012, 22:06

[RealityRipple]

Plugged in some cheap Samsung earbuds, cranked my volume to maximum, and I could hear every tone. I'm 24. 19 and 20 started getting hard to hear as a solid tone, but I could still hear them as a... high pitched rumbling. And then 22 cleared up again and was audible. I'm sort of surprised given that I still have ringing in my ears from a concert I went to last May.

[Kujibo]

17khz on Sennheiser HD600's. I'm 46 years old, and have a loud ringing tinnitus at 11khz (which obscures a lot between 10khz - 13khz).

Dammit, now that you mentioned tinnitus I think I just self diagnosed myself as having it too. I've often heard a high pitch whine even when very young, I used to think it was just the TV thing or whatever, but now I always seem to hear a high pitch whine no matter where I am and I don't think it's just equipment causing it.

The sad and ridiculous thing is it didn't bother me at all before I started thinking about it yesterday, now it's driving me nuts as I know how to focus on it and I can't stop thinking about it. Maybe it's all placebo, but I have spent too much time playing in loud bands, so unfortunately probably not.

[AllanP]

I can hear 19 KHz very strong and 20 KHz weak, my headphones frequency response is 20-20.000 Hz so maybe with other headphones I would hear the higher frequencies

I am 22 years old

This post has been edited by AllanP: Feb 26 2012, 21:58

[greynol]

'folding back down to lower frequencies' phenomen here too with my environment. That's why I think we shouldn't pay too much attention to this experiment.

I feel like this should be posted after every response so that people will think twice before posting their results.

There have been several "how high can you hear" discussions and this has always been a problem.

[extrabigmehdi]

I have done again the test , and this time perhaps at a higher volume,
and with a different headphone (hd25 1 II).
This time I've been able to hear the 21 khz frequency.
What's funny , it's that I hear 21 khz more clearly than the 20 khz frequency (or I'm not even sure than I hear 20 khz ).
I'm missing the logic of this.
I think it's hard to get consistent results from this test, I'm not sure they are so meaningful.
And if you hear something as quite weak, is that valid as "you hear that frequency" ?

This post has been edited by extrabigmehdi: Feb 27 2012, 01:13

[saratoga]

What's funny , it's that I hear 21 khz more clearly than the 20 khz frequency (or I'm not even sure than I hear 20 khz ).
I'm missing the logic of this.
I think it's hard to get consistent results from this test, I'm not sure they are so meaningful.
And if you hear something as quite weak, is that valid as "you hear that frequency" ?

That is almost certainly aliasing. Try again with foobar2000 and a good resampler, it'll probably go away.

[extrabigmehdi]

What's funny , it's that I hear 21 khz more clearly than the 20 khz frequency (or I'm not even sure than I hear 20 khz ).
I'm missing the logic of this.
I think it's hard to get consistent results from this test, I'm not sure they are so meaningful.
And if you hear something as quite weak, is that valid as "you hear that frequency" ?

That is almost certainly aliasing. Try again with foobar2000 and a good resampler, it'll probably go away.

Hum, I don't expect this kind of problem with my expensive xonar stx.
But ok, I've generated two sine waves with soundforge , at 192 khz (theorically supported by my soundcard),
and I'm not just anymore sure of anything.
I played them on foobar. I've boosted volume to max, and noticed some random noise that are gone after some times .
Whatever ...

[IgorC]

I've boosted volume to max, and noticed some random noise that are gone after some times .
Whatever ...

Reading more carefully actually benefits understanding of the problem:

Which is the highest frequency that You can hear (at normal loudness level)?

This post has been edited by IgorC: Feb 27 2012, 01:57

[christopher]

This test is totally messed up under Linux (Ubuntu 8.04), Firefox 10 and Flash Player 11.0.1.152, the base tone is literally buried in aliasing artifacts. Interestingly enough, running Foobar 2000 under Winde does not produce anything like that.

I can hear 18kHz at age of 31 using the audiocheck.net sample and Sennheiser HD 215 headphones.

Up to 18Khz in foobar2000 WASAPI output -> 16bit(dithering enabled).
Up to 17Khz in on http://www.noiseaddicts.com with Firefox 9.0.1 and Flash Player 10.3.183.7 (I don't know if it is a problem with the tone or Flash Player's fault)

Used a pair of Sennheiser HD-280 Pros through a Total Bithead.
Edit: I am 27

There are many potential problems when one attempts to play back audio which is pure sine, particularly high frequency content >17 kHz. I had to verify that the file was OK by downloading it; I think also my standard sound card (Audigy 2 running kX) which natively runs at 48 kHz and on-chip resamples to 44.1 was also introducing aliasing when playing in-browser.

I get undistorted bit perfect output in foobar with the PPHS resampler, and the MP3 as offered on the noiseaddicts site plays fine if I do so in foobar; anywhere else and it distorts). I also tested with Audacity at 48 kHz project rate and Cubase 5.5 with kX ASIO at 48 kHz. FWIW the older versions of Audition seemed to have problems generating pure sines above 16/17 kHz, couldn't figure out why at the time. (it wasn't a playback-distortion problem, directly burning the WAVs to a CD also resulting in aliasing on playback).

I used Audacity to generate my own tones to doublecheck my results: on my nearfield monitors in my fairly noisy room I can hear tones clearly to ~18 kHz. Not tested with my HD650s tonight - when I've tested in a quiet environment previously, playing back tones from both a PC and my H340, I could hear to about 19 kHz). I am 26 and a handful of months, my right inner ear was unfortunately damaged a few years ago when someone smacked me square on the ear with a flat palm (result: NIHL, tinnitus, hyperacusis etc, it's a bitch).


The only sure-fire way to check your hearing with sines is to generate them yourself in a trusted audio editor or DAW then play back on a system you've verified as not introducing additional distortion; I set up and checked foobar using the udial.ape test.

This post has been edited by christopher: Feb 27 2012, 02:02

[extrabigmehdi]

I've boosted volume to max, and noticed some random noise that are gone after some times .
Whatever ...

Reading more carefully actually benefits understanding of the problem:

Which is the highest frequency that You can hear (at normal loudness level)?

I know, but I wanted to see if it makes a difference. The test I've done on browser were at normal level. I was confused with the different results I got with my generated sinewaves (nothing to hear) , so I boosted the volume.

[IgorC]

Also a simple analysis can be applied. And some people actually have applied it. And Thank them very much for that (for understanding).

Listen 12 kHz then listen 14 khz. Notice and remeber how a single tone actually sounds and how it differentiates with each increment of frequency. A single tone is a monotone (it´s not rumbling). If You notice odd decreasing of the pitch while you actually go to higher frequencies then it's simply not a pure tone with indicated frequency.

[saratoga]

I know, but I wanted to see if it makes a difference. The test I've done on browser were at normal level. I was confused with the different results I got with my generated sinewaves (nothing to hear) , so I boosted the volume.

The results you got in the browser are just aliasing, so they're not real. When you played something in foobar2000 at a higher sampling rate, the aliasing went away so you don't hear anything (except distortion when the volume is set too high).

[greynol]

FWIW the older versions of Audition seemed to have problems generating pure sines above 16/17 kHz, couldn't figure out why at the time. (it wasn't a playback-distortion problem, directly burning the WAVs to a CD also resulting in aliasing on playback).

I will have to see hard evidence before believing it since none of my testing with either Adobe Audition 1.0 or 1.5 demonstrate the behavior you describe. The testing involved capturing my speaker's output with a microphone.

[christopher]

FWIW the older versions of Audition seemed to have problems generating pure sines above 16/17 kHz, couldn't figure out why at the time. (it wasn't a playback-distortion problem, directly burning the WAVs to a CD also resulting in aliasing on playback).

I will have to see hard evidence before believing it since none of my testing with either Adobe Audition 1.0 or 1.5 demonstrate the behavior you describe. The testing involved capturing my speaker's output with a microphone.

Afraid that'll never happen as I ditched Audition a long time ago. You could see it in the waveform after generating sines; above a particular frequency (from memory, somewhere between 16 and 18 kHz) the resulting waveform had aliasing and distortion - the waveform was not a pure sine - as if the lowpass rolloff was too sharp or the algorithm wasn't quite tuned properly. No resampling or playback and rerecording was necessary to view the imperfect waveform, you could simply zoom in to the freshly generated tone. Perhaps my Audition install just hated me, I could never be bothered to really fix it as I'd already begun to use other audio editors by then.

This post has been edited by christopher: Feb 27 2012, 03:14

[extrabigmehdi]

FWIW the older versions of Audition seemed to have problems generating pure sines above 16/17 kHz, couldn't figure out why at the time. (it wasn't a playback-distortion problem, directly burning the WAVs to a CD also resulting in aliasing on playback).

I will have to see hard evidence before believing it since none of my testing with either Adobe Audition 1.0 or 1.5 demonstrate the behavior you describe. The testing involved capturing my speaker's output with a microphone.

Perhaps the playback inside Audition. There's definitely this problem with soundforge, that's why I generate the sinewave, but then play it in foobar.

[greynol]

There is no such problem with Audition.

FWIW I had an issue with subtracting samples at full scale with Audition 1.5 and have since gone back to 1.0, but again, no issues with incorrectly generated pure tones at any frequency permitted by the chosen sample rate.