Hearing test

[frankn]

@Magicdog do you feel a need to denigrate people on this forum? I’m sure you can do better. 

[frankn]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/10848570/

this I find interesting as it is pointing to the brain reacting to >20Khz. There are some other links at the end as well but I haven’t yet read them. 

I think we still have away to go before we say human hearing is limited to 20Khz. There is a reason why it’s being observed but it’s going to take a lot more work. 

[magical]

46 minutes ago, frankn said:

@Magicdog do you feel a need to denigrate people on this forum? I’m sure you can do better. 

To Frank,  if I've offended you I do apologise though I'm not sure what I did to do so. I had no intention of doing  the wrong thing but I think what I  wrote was true. Feel free to point out what you think was wrong.

[aussievintage]

On 10/7/2017 at 7:15 PM, MLXXX said:

So in practice a 10kHz tone usually has little character to it. Even its second harmonic is hard or impossible to hear.  Music is generally written for much lower pitches.  The top note of a piano is a C at 4186Hz.  The very high notes on a violin that may occur in a virtuoso piece for that instrument have a thin sound. 

 

The listening experience for me, includes all sorts of other sounds, not just musical notes.  Breath sounds, finger noises on strings, all sorts of percussive noises, all contribute information higher than the highest musical note, and must be there for me to call it hifi .

[aussievintage]

On 10/7/2017 at 7:15 PM, MLXXX said:

 

Edited December 11, 2017 by aussievintage
duplicate

[Batty]

I work with frequencies from 100KHz up to 40GHz, can't hear any of that.

Edited December 11, 2017 by Batty

[sir sanders zingmore]

5 minutes ago, aussievintage said:

 

The listening experience for me, includes all sorts of other sounds, not just musical notes.  Breath sounds, finger noises on strings, all sorts of percussive noises, all contribute information higher than the highest musical note, and must be there for me to call it hifi .

Not sure which of those other sounds are actually higher than the highest musical note 

[aussievintage]

1 hour ago, Sir Sanders Zingmore said:

Not sure which of those other sounds are actually higher than the highest musical note 

Anything with 'white noise,  can have content right throughout the spectrum.  Sounds not caused by resonance in the main. 

 

Also, lower frequency non-sinusoidal wave worms have harmonics in the region above 10kHz

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_wave

[sir sanders zingmore]

9 minutes ago, aussievintage said:

Anything with 'white noise,  can have content right throughout the spectrum.  Sounds not caused by resonance in the main. 

 

Also, lower frequency non-sinusoidal wave worms have harmonics in the region above 10kHz

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_wave

But are the sounds you mentioned white noise ?

[aussievintage]

Just now, Sir Sanders Zingmore said:

But are the sounds you mentioned white noise ?

Yes, the rushing sound of air contains white noise, for example.

 

Also, while non-sinusoidal waveforms are not white noise, many (most?) instruments produce them.  You really cannot exclude the 10kHz to 20kHz region.

[MLXXX]

3 hours ago, aussievintage said:

 

The listening experience for me, includes all sorts of other sounds, not just musical notes.  Breath sounds, finger noises on strings, all sorts of percussive noises, all contribute information higher than the highest musical note, and must be there for me to call it hifi .

I don't think it was in dispute that hi-fi reproduction requires a response up to the limit of human hearing (approx 20kHz for young adults).

 

I was responding to a question about harmonics and gave an answer about integer (or near to integer) harmonics, and also referred to more complex overtones as from percussive instruments.

A factor to keep in mind is that because the human ear has reduced sensitivity in its highest octave (10kHz to 20kHz), upper frequency content although present in a recording will often be masked by the presence of lower frequency content.

 

With breath noises from vocalists there is the complication that vocal microphones often lift the response at mid-frequencies to give "presence". Sibilant sounds are often exaggerated.  So it becomes a bit of an open question how that should be reproduced! (There is also the technical issue of how far from the speakers you are and what the relative humidity in your room is, as attenuation of upper frequencies is very dependent on humidity.)

With breath noises from a solo cellist or violinist (and in this case an instrumental rather than vocal microphone could be expected) I'm not sure how much audible content there'd be above 10kHz but I guess it ought to be reproduced for completeness, even though the  performer would normally try to suppress excessively noisy breathing!

 

I think the attack of a violin note can include significant upper frequency content. I'm not so sure about fingers or a pick for plucking or strumming guitar strings. That seems to me to be typically a duller sound. 

In another thread there's been mention of adjustments needed for recordings to vinyl. Apparently mikes used for cymbals could deliberated be chosen to roll off over 18kHz  to prevent excessive high frequency content reaching the cutting head. Or other techniques could be used in the mastering to avoid too much stress on the stylus or groove when playing back the vinyl disc on a pressing released to consumers.

FM radio (even with classical music stations that use little processing) has its issues with high frequency content because of the use of pre-emphasis. Overmodulation at high audio frequencies needs to be avoided. But then I guess we don't classify FM radio as hi-fi, and its usual upper frequency limit is only 15kHz anyway. 

Edited December 12, 2017 by MLXXX

[Guest Eggcup The Daft]

On 07/10/2017 at 8:15 PM, MLXXX said:

So in practice a 10kHz tone usually has little character to it. Even its second harmonic is hard or impossible to hear.  Music is generally written for much lower pitches.  The top note of a piano is a C at 4186Hz.  The very high notes on a violin that may occur in a virtuoso piece for that instrument have a thin sound. 

This chart is useful and shows harmonic frequency ranges for instruments. It's not completely accurate: some cymbals have been measured to sound at 26kHz, for example, but it's good enough.

As far as the high notes sounding "thin" on the violin, this is because the string has been shortened to the extent that it doesn't generate  higher harmonics, so only harmonics from the soundboard/box will sound. You can hear exactly the same effect on classical guitar (the instrument in my avatar has extra frets, so it's more noticeable!) and, indeed, on double bass.

 

As construction techniques for instruments have improved, the very high harmonics have been reduced or killed completely. Energy that goes into producing frequencies we can't hear is wasted; this wasn't necessarily known to instrument builders, but as they worked to increase the sound output of the instrument, those high frequencies were reduced as a result. It's not surprising that even period instrument recordings don't show much going on outside of our hearing range.

 

[mwhouston]

Funny how with super tweeters which reproduce frequencies we cannot hear but help make music sound better.

 

Shows there is more to listening than hearing. You can quote me on that.

[Wimbo]

I cleaned my ears out about a month ago with the solution you drip in your ears to remove wax. Now I feel I have a form of Tinnitus as I have a buzzing in my ears. When I ride my bikes now (Which are quite loud) I put ear plugs in. It seems that you can hear your body noises (breathing etc ) more when you have the plugs in your ears as the outside noises are more dampened. The other day, while doing this, I noticed I had two sets of noises in my ears which were totally isolated from each other. My body noises but also the Tinnitus. Both were coming from inside. I wonder if this is a form of deafness. I changed valves  in my Preamp recently and picked up the difference straight away.

Signed,

Confused

[HdB]

I'm fascinated by this weird 'fixation' that music is made up of 'sine waves', that any individual piano note (or any musical instrument for that matter) contains just fundamental sine wave frequencies and multiple overtones - examining an amplifier's 13th harmonic of a discrete tone isn't at all useful to describe the actual ability of the device to reproduce music - on the other hand, it is useful to illustrate the devices ability to function under a specific test, so not all testing is wasteful

 

In a similar way, classifying/examining our hearing ability via our response to discrete sinewave tones at different frequencies and volumes is rather incomplete despite the sometimes exhaustive analysis that follows

 

If you look at music as a constantly changing series of transients rather than some combination of sine waves, you may appreciate a very different approach to musical reproduction

 

Wimbo,

There shouldn't be any problem with the 'dewaxing' of the ears unless some remained behind - it's advisable to go to your local clinic and have the ears examined and possibly vacuumed to get rid of any 'buildup' in the ear canal - after a month, your ears should have settled down - I had one of mine cleaned awhile ago of a stubborn wax deposit on the eardrum membrane itself (a rather unpleasant experience!) and it took only a few days to settle down - a huge difference to hearing.

 

The internal 'noise' that you hear is a combination of cranial vibration, pulse, skeletal vibration, etc - the mechanism of our hearing is anything but simple and adding our mental interpretations to what we have learned over our lifetime adds to the complexity - it's amazing that we obtain such a significant emotional response to what reaches our ears/body as an everyday occurrence, both good and bad 

 

About your tinnitus, you might lookup the Tomatis Sound therapy technique that's offered in the 'Wellness Clinics" and elsewhere - I've had excellent results with this method regarding tinnitus, CPS and some periods of that ghastly Miniere's Syndrome - CPS (Cocktail Party Syndrome) is a colloquial term for Sensory Discrimination Loss and applies to all situations (not just speech) where more than one source of sound is present - it's very tiring to listen to music too.

[MLXXX]

12 minutes ago, jrhill said:

I'm fascinated by this weird 'fixation' that music is made up of 'sine waves', that any individual piano note (or any musical instrument for that matter) contains just fundamental sine wave frequencies and multiple overtones - examining an amplifier's 13th harmonic of a discrete tone isn't at all useful to describe the actual ability of the device to reproduce music - on the other hand, it is useful to illustrate the devices ability to function under a specific test, so not all testing is wasteful

It's not quite so weird if you consider that the cochlea is set up to respond to sine waves too. Each minute section of the human cochlea can respond only to a periodic waveform at the resonant frequency of that minute section.   

As an analogy, the cochlea is a  set of thousands of tuning forks each of slightly different size and resonant frequency.  Somehow the ear is able to process the nervous impulses from these thousands of tuning forks to give us a perception of sound.

[Wimbo]

1 hour ago, jrhill said:

Wimbo,

There shouldn't be any problem with the 'dewaxing' of the ears unless some remained behind - it's advisable to go to your local clinic and have the ears examined and possibly vacuumed to get rid of any 'buildup' in the ear canal - after a month, your ears should have settled down - I had one of mine cleaned awhile ago of a stubborn wax deposit on the eardrum membrane itself (a rather unpleasant experience!) and it took only a few days to settle down - a huge difference to hearing.

 

The internal 'noise' that you hear is a combination of cranial vibration, pulse, skeletal vibration, etc - the mechanism of our hearing is anything but simple and adding our mental interpretations to what we have learned over our lifetime adds to the complexity - it's amazing that we obtain such a significant emotional response to what reaches our ears/body as an everyday occurrence, both good and bad 

 

About your tinnitus, you might lookup the Tomatis Sound therapy technique that's offered in the 'Wellness Clinics" and elsewhere - I've had excellent results with this method regarding tinnitus, CPS and some periods of that ghastly Miniere's Syndrome - CPS (Cocktail Party Syndrome) is a colloquial term for Sensory Discrimination Loss and applies to all situations (not just speech) where more than one source of sound is present - it's very tiring to listen to music too.

Thanks mate. Some good info right there. I'll check out the Wellness Clinics for the Tomatis Technique.

[HdB]

MLXXX,      (Latin numerals = ?)

 

Didn't know that - good input - thanks

 

How do these sinewave sensitive receptors discern the transients, particularly the significant transient leading edge level and 'gradients'?

 

I began to study the 'psychology of hearing' (adult Uni) but life intervened and I never got to complete it, unfortunately - the whole extent of the influence of the 8th nerve on your body is very interesting indeed.

 

No problem Wimbo

Getting rid of the tinnitus was relatively straightforward once I got the idea straight - it just needed some patience - I got the set of cassettes (yeah, bloody old ideas, eh!) and use them every few years as the problem crops up occasionally.

 That damn CPS makes you seem deaf without being deaf, if you get what I mean - you just can't discern what's going on if there's more than 1 source of sound - going to a shopping mal was a trip of futility - I used to take a pen and notebook and write things down, it got that bad at one point

[aussievintage]

1 hour ago, jrhill said:

I'm fascinated by this weird 'fixation' that music is made up of 'sine waves', that any individual piano note (or any musical instrument for that matter) contains just fundamental sine wave frequencies and multiple overtones -

 

 

It's just a mathematical way of expressing it.  It is a convenient way to analyse the signal.

[Al.M]

11 hours ago, mwhouston said:

Funny how with super tweeters which reproduce frequencies we cannot hear but help make music sound better.

 

Shows there is more to listening than hearing. You can quote me on that.

The super tweeter may just be lifting the overall treble response resulting in a brighter sound giving the impression there is higher frequency, when in fact it may not.

[MLXXX]

10 hours ago, jrhill said:

MLXXX,      (Latin numerals = ?)

 

Didn't know that - good input - thanks

 

[Yes, MLXXX = 1080; intended to be a reference to Full HD video.]

 

I may have oversimplified. My tuning fork analogy corresponds to what is known as the "place" theory of pitch perception and is generally accepted as the correct model for higher frequencies, but there is strong evidence  that lower frequencies may be perceived by an alternative method under what is known as the temporal" theory of pitch perception.

 

Or it could well be that  lower frequency pitch perception may use a combination of the two methods. 

 

10 hours ago, jrhill said:

How do these sinewave sensitive receptors discern the transients, particularly the significant transient leading edge level and 'gradients'?

 

The receptors have a quick response. If you use waveform generating software to generate a single isolated sinewave the ear will be able to get an approximate impression of pitch when that single cycle is played through a loudspeaker. A single cycle at 440Hz is a dull plop. A single cycle at 1kHz is brighter and beginning to sound like a click. Single cycles at 4kHz or 5Khz will sound like clicks but have different apparent pitches.

It would not be unreasonable to suppose that a transient in the nature of an attack waveform with a fast rise time, which would typically contain many frequency components, would stimulate a large number of receptors in the human cochlea, simultaneously.

 

This evening I tried to find some reference material on the net. Most of it is broad brush, reflecting the still very limited scientific understanding of hearing perception.  This powerpoint presentation may be of interest to you or other forum members:  http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/courses/spsci/AUDL4007/Pitch perception 2015.pdf

[Guest Eggcup The Daft]

On 12/14/2017 at 10:22 AM, mwhouston said:

Funny how with super tweeters which reproduce frequencies we cannot hear but help make music sound better.

 

Shows there is more to listening than hearing. You can quote me on that.

Supertweeters generally have either no or a first order crossover, and emit sound in the audible range. Additionally, by the time you reach those astonishingly high frequencies, they are beaming to the point that you need your head perfectly positioned and in a vice to get any advantage.

 

Put those two facts together, and my guess would be that this is about not knowing how supertweeters work, not about not understanding how human hearing works.

[Guest Eggcup The Daft]

On 12/11/2017 at 11:03 PM, frankn said:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/10848570/

this I find interesting as it is pointing to the brain reacting to >20Khz. There are some other links at the end as well but I haven’t yet read them. 

I think we still have away to go before we say human hearing is limited to 20Khz. There is a reason why it’s being observed but it’s going to take a lot more work. 

It's also interesting to note that teams at a number of other institutions as well as in the industry appear to have tried and failed to replicate the results in this paper. It's even been suggested that the equipment in use may have stimulated the response in this experiment, rather than the sound waves.

[frankn]

Eggy please provide links to the experiments & results. 

[Guest Eggcup The Daft]

I don't have a lot of this to hand, but:

 

NHK - http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=12375, http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=13185

 

Here's a wide ranging discussion which contains a possible explanation for the results in the paper you quoted, with some experimental data:

 

http://www.davidgriesinger.com/intermod.ppt

 

The body, though, can be affected by hypersonic waves (this link downloads a file that needs to be opened as a PDF):

https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=40&ved=0ahUKEwj21vbqrY7YAhVBPJQKHfFdCfA4HhAWCGUwCQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Farchiwum.ciop.pl%2F59815&usg=AOvVaw0Gxo7PlOBsFac9Lbnhhrt6

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4005747/

demonstrates the effect. It reports that the sounds are not heard, but requires the high frequency sounds to be presented to the whole body.

Oohashi seems to have an "in progress" paper reporting similar results.

 

The wikipedia article  on the hypersonic effect contains some other useful links as well as some criticism of the paper.

 

Unfortunately I can't find the article that referred to the equipment possibly causing the effect, I'll keep looking.

 

 

Edited December 16, 2017 by Eggcup The Daft