Which is the highest frequency that You can hear? Options

[mjb2006]

16 kHz sounds clean now (using foobar), but 17 to 19 kHz sounds like a broad band noise in my environment. 20 kHz sounds like a lower frequency again.

You might try burning those WAVs to audio CD and playing it in a real CD player.

[Kujibo]

@Kujibo: do you mind sharing your test files with us?

I didn't save any, I was generating them on the fly and using binary deduction to narrow into my threshold, so they were fairly specific to my hearing range.

This should be pretty easy to do yourself with Audacity though:

- Make sure the project rate (found in bottom left corner) is set to what your audio hardware is set up to output (e.g. 48 or 96 kHz) to avoid resampling during playback.

- Menu: Track -> Add New -> Audio Track

- Menu: Generate -> Tone. Enter the frequency you want to create

- Give it a listen, try another rate.

- Get rid of the clicks by selecting first 100 milliseconds or so of the file, then with menu: Effect -> Fade In


I would think there must be some actual hearing test programs out there that can generate sines on the fly at the native output rate, I didn't bother looking.

Cheers

[halb27]

Thanks for the advice. I will do it.

[extrabigmehdi]

18 khz, and almost 35 years old, so my ears are still "young" .
I used my srh940 headphones.
I began the test from the highest frequency, and decreased it until I was able to hear something.

[Remedial Sound]

Out of curiosity, which track? I'm a big Autechre fan but have never heard (of) this.

Second Bad Vilbel?

There was 26-sec sample badvilbel.flac at http://www.ff123.net/samples.html but it seems that this site is no more.

Ah, thanks, I vaguely recall this now, will give it a listen and see what I hear!

I'm 35 and can still hear that TV signal frequency (~16 kHz), though my wife and many of my friends of similar age can't.

[m45t3r]

18kHZ with phones, 17kHz with speaker.


I'm 20 years old btw.

[robojock]

17 kHz, age 33

[extrabigmehdi]

Hum I've redone the test with the speakers, and it's hard to hear the 18khz frequency, probably because of the surrounding noise (pc making some background noise) The closed headphone, helps by isolating a bit.

This post has been edited by extrabigmehdi: Feb 25 2012, 06:49

[onkl]

16 kHz sounds clean now (using foobar), but 17 to 19 kHz sounds like a broad band noise in my environment. 20 kHz sounds like a lower frequency again.

That's aliasing coming from either your soundcard or windows mixer. Try using a software resampler in foobar to match the frequency your soundcard is set to.

This post has been edited by onkl: Feb 25 2012, 08:02

[iGold]

My hearing limit is 17kHz (37 years old), my wife - 18kHz (age 31) and my daughter - 21kHz (age 8). We used headphones and foobar2000 tone generator with 48kHz resampler.

[Steve Forte Rio]

Left ear - ~18 kHz, right ear - ~18.5 kHz (my own test on sine with increasing frequency). Your test: 18 kHz max.

This post has been edited by Steve Forte Rio: Feb 25 2012, 12:16

[dhromed]

Out of curiosity, which track? I'm a big Autechre fan but have never heard (of) this.

Second Bad Vilbel?

Ah, thanks, I vaguely recall this now, will give it a listen and see what I hear!

Visual Analysis.

Sample upload here

Edit
Oh, lvqcl linked to an old post of mine that I'd completely forgotten about. Heh.

This post has been edited by dhromed: Feb 25 2012, 14:38

[Ed Seedhouse]

Well, at age 68 I hear sounds right up to 15 khz, but they are almost certainly not not 15khz sounds. Above about 10khz the sound begins to blend with my mild tinnitus and I can't tell where the actual cutoff is.

This post has been edited by Ed Seedhouse: Feb 25 2012, 15:46

[Intruder66]

15 kHz with (mid-quality) speakers at the age of 18, that is really bad I guess?
Maybe I'll re-do this test, I just listened to loud music five minutes ago.

This post has been edited by Intruder66: Feb 25 2012, 16:46

[derty2]

I am over 40 years of age, I could hear all tones up to 20kHz (I could barely hear it but it was there). After 17kHz things were getting very very thin.

I was sitting in a small room with a fairly loud desktop computer creating constant ambient noise. I needed to raise the volume to a high enough level to hear over the computer.

My audio chain was going from PC line out (foobar2000 with kernel streaming, Windows XP with volume controls all at max), splitting to 2 separate integrated amplifiers, feeding two separate pairs of speakers (2+2 = 4 speaker stereo).
Rearfield (12 feet away) speaker pair is Fostex SM6600 studio monitors, and Nearfield (3 feet away) speaker pair is ATC SCM19 .

If I was listening to this test in a dead quiet room, with my audio gear, hearing 20 kHz would have been a piece of cake.

By the way... I also have this product in my media library: "ALAN PARSONS - SOUND CHECK 2 - AUDIO TEST & DEMONSTRATION CD",
and on this CD is a sequence of tracks named "PINK NOISE 1/3 OCTAVE SPECTRUM ANALYSIS" which go from 20 Hz all the way up to 20 kHz,
and i can hear all the tones.

This post has been edited by derty2: Feb 25 2012, 17:33

[no404error]

17/19kHz (speakers/headphones), 30 y/o.

This post has been edited by no404error: Feb 25 2012, 18:16

[dhromed]

15 kHz with (mid-quality) speakers at the age of 18, that is really bad I guess?
Maybe I'll re-do this test, I just listened to loud music five minutes ago.

Best conditions, I believe, are late in the evening after at least an hour of quietness.

[dhromed]

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

[somemightsay]

When I first ran the tests, I had the TV on a little loud and could only hear 12 kHz through my headphones at normal volume.
Hence, 12 kHz is what I selected for my poll result. I just tried again in a quiet environment with the same volume and same
headphones, and could hear 14 kHz. That made me feel a bit better. 44 yrs old.

This post has been edited by somemightsay: Feb 25 2012, 19:11

[halb27]

I tried all the advices given here on my standard pc but without success. Noise is too strong in the extreme frequency range.
I switched over to my notebook, and the results were very different: no more noise and no obvious aliasing frequencies up to 18 kHz. These drop in at 19 and 20 kHz.
But: If I consider the 17 and 18 kHz to be played back correctly I am able to hear 17 and 18 kHz. Aged 62 I don't believe that.

So finally I took mjb2006's advice, created an audio cd and played it on a regular cd player. Now everything's clear: I hear 15 kHz not too badly, but my hearing stops at 16 kHz which I can hear though very weakly.

I am afraid my experience with pc equipment in this test carries over to other testers producing a big question mark to the test results. I guess the biggest problem is not obvious aliasing frequencies as I encountered them on my notebook.

This post has been edited by halb27: Feb 26 2012, 01:00

[saratoga]

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.

[mudlord]

22khz, 23 y/o

Sennheiser HD201

[googlebot]

Being synaesthetic the answer should be about 790 THz.

[millifoo]

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).

Some interesting things I noted:

I hear 15khz in my left ear only. 16khz in my right ear only. 17khz is back to center, but much quieter.

[FreaqyFrequency]

17k, 20 years old. I'm okay with this.