Today I discovered (to my surprise) that I can hear a 19KHz sinewave, and as low as 15 Hz or less (although it's more just a sort of wobble than a tone). Headphones were Grado SR60's, and the soundcard is an M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 (so I'm pretty positive it's not some sort of harmonic I'm hearing -- these tones are very clear on the 24/96). I generated the tones with Cool Edit Pro.

Too obvious to need to ABX (sounds like tinnitus, or hanging close to the back of a TV set - very clear), but I'd like to anyway, or at least compare it with someone else's generated tones -- does anyone remember that URL with the frequency sweep tone, in case Cool Edit is doing something unintended?

Wonder if cleaning the wax out of my ears yesterday did it... if it's true, I feel quite lucky at age 39...

I'm not an expert on headphones, but isn't it true that the Grado SR60's frequency response is 20 Hz to 20 kHz?

cya

Not sure... the frequency response listed by headphone manufacturers seems to be fairly arbitrary, often referring to the supposedly "flat" frequency response range rather than "absolute" frequency response. I tend to personally take those specs with a grain of salt, since they seem to mean different things to different manufacturers.

As an example, Etymotic lists the upper range of their headphones as 16KHz, although few would dispute the sound quality.

My upper limit appears to be 17kHZ, that is a most unpleasant sound to me.

Audiophile
Arcam A85
HD600

I could hear 20Hz with this set-up but the tone was exceptionally quiet.

Check Out This Thread.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....=0&#entry102626

With the Audiophile, I think you must disable the mixer and play wav only in order not to get resampling. Otherwise, you can hear aliases that are high pitched, but not as high as the frequency you generated.

The HD-600 is given for 16 Hz at -3 db and 12 Hz at -10 db.
I've got the same ampli and speakers as you Evereux, and turning up the volume, 16 Hz can be felt easily. 12 Hz is more difficult, you have to turn up the volume quite loud.
It's funny : the main effect of the 12 Hz sine in headphones is that I hear the noise of my computer, in the room, being "pumped" 12 times each second, because or the sound pressure on the eardrum.
Instead of hearing the usual continuous "whishhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh", I hear "whish-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh"

But this can depend on our respective hearing. I think my eardrums might be sensitive to low frequencies, maybe because of a certain night in a night club that I won't forget

I did that and can still hear the tone (it's really more like a mild tinnitus even at a fairly high volume), but not sure it was generated correctly (in fact I don't think so). Here's the graph of what Cool Edit generated:



The peak is at -2.8dB (so I know it's not clipping I'm hearing) but why the curve (?)...

The graph is OK. The curve comes from the windowing used to perform the analysis.
Looks like Hamming. Try Blackman instead and you'll see the difference.

EDIT sorry, I didn't see it was Welch. Well try Blackmann.

That did it (nearly vertical)...

Perhaps I should try ABXing the tone with digital silence to be sure... even then, it could still in theory be some kind of lower frequency resonance from the soundcard. Maybe burning the tone to CD and using regular CDDA playback thru the headphone jack of the CD-RW drive with different headphones would be another test -- will try that.

-- Still audible at a fairly high volume, with the headphones held in a certain position (away from my ears a bit and slightly forward). Amazing what a lousy analog stage the Plexwriter 24/10/40A has through the headphone jack (quite a bit of hiss).

You could also use a tone with increasing pitch (e.g. 10kHz -> 20kHz) for testing. If you hear the pitch starting to decrease at a certain point instead of increasing until you can't hear it anymore it's aliassing.

I tried this again, this time with the volume cranked up some more. I was a bit apprehensive previoulsy since I've done these tests before, made a mistake with volume and thus frightening myself half to death. I was extra cautious this time.

I could hear, or at least feel the 12Hz (it does have a strange effect on the sounds around me), 15Hz was pretty easy.

I cut off at about 1600. Oh yea, golden ears.

Heh, my otorhinolaryngologist said I have poor bass hearing, but I had a cold then

10 Hz with my speakers (resonance)
12 Hz with headphones (easy to hear - And I've thought Senn 497 had little bass )

Lowpass ABXed lately up to 19.5 kHz (CEPv2, Total Annihilation game music - orchestra)

Sines up to 21kHz (according to that otorhinolarynologist - his testing phones' max).
Yes, I'm a lucky bastard.

I hope you mean 16,000.

If it's 1600 then you would have trouble hearing the phone ring, although it would be nice on overnight airline flights with children nearby.

At 1600Hz he would have problems understanding speech, especially female.

I forgot to mention that I tested at my normal listening volumes. (65dB at 1kHz)

I did try that with my previous soundcard (PCI128) and there was definitely aliassing, but haven't tried it with the Audiophile 24/96 (maybe because I wouldn't expect aliassing with a better card). Will try it tho, still looking for that file others here have used (not sure how to create an increasing pitch in Cool Edit, but I could probably figure it out).

I meant decahertz, of course!

10 Hz with speakers ? That's quite impossible. At this stage, watch for your windows ! 10 Hz resonate at both ends of a 17 meters room.
How does it sound like ? Most speaker should do a lot of noise when fed by a 10 Hz sine (until complete destruction), but nowhere near 10 Hz, even subwoofers.
One of the biggest soundsystem in the world, in a Berlin or a Frankfurt club (in Frankfurt this would have been the Dorian Gray), was capable of playing 11 Hz.

Sound DAMN BAD. Like techno party in your home, maybe worse.
Neighbours didn't object though, because I immediately power-cycled it.
I have PCV windows and I'm sitting just in front of these speakers in a quite small room.

I think it wasn't playing real 10Hz, my amplifier or speakers /EDIT\ (well, tube) \EDIT/
could have done something to the sound.
Of course, this was very low end sound, resonating everything in the room.

/EDIT\ Next time, please warn people about testing low frequencies,
like before using udial. \EDIT/

I have always had problems understanding females Maybe that's why.

The Audiophile won't produce any lower frequency aliases when playing a 19 KHz tone, no matter how you do it. And CEP will produce perfect tones if the parameters are properly set. Your graph looks like a perfect tone.

Below 20 Hz, I'd say waves are not perceived as tones anymore, just as some kind of pressure pulses, so it has not much sense talking about hearing tones below 20 Hz. And many times what you will hear is woofer distortion, not the true sub-20 Hz pulses.

I thought I could hear just up to 18.5 KHz, but I discovered at the dialup.wav thread that I can hear up to 20 KHz if I play the tone loud enough. However, I can hear a lowpass of just 18 KHz, and just on very special, probably non-real-world sample, and concentrating a lot. BTW, I'm 32.