Poll: Can you hear sound over 20kHz? - Page 9

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidgotsa 

I thought no one could hear over 20kHz. 

It's rather questionable if these people, that voted >20 kHz, really can hear such high frequencies or if they lied or use crappy equipment or ...

it differs from person to person. 20Hz=20kHz is just average.

i can hear to 22khz, when i was 11, 6 years ago i could hear just 23khz.

whereas some cannot hear 16khz at my age.

some will lie of course. but. some genuinely can ;)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cakensaur 

it differs from person to person. 20Hz=20kHz is just average.

20 kHz is the average for children. Also, this is not a yes or no question. With age higher frequencies slowly "fade out". That's just normal. If you have to turn the volume up or cannot hear but only feel something I'd say this is the limit of your hearing range.

I can hear very well and hear all sorts of things that others don't even notice (like the psu in my printer, TVs ...) but my hearing fades out at ~19 kHz. Since I'm sensitive in the treble range I'm happy not to hear the noise above 19-20 kHz. ;)

Turns out I can hear 22khz in the browser loud and clear but not when I dl the .wav file and play it in foobar with ASIO (bit perfect setup), so I blame Win 7 crappy resampling :)

After what I've read about Vista/7's resampling (like this http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=86676 ) I'm not really surprised. 

Even though I can hear a lot (too many) things such as PSUs, monitors and whatnot, I was still surprised to be able to pick up 22khz being 22yo. Sure I took care of my ears for the most part but it still seemed fishy. 

So with rigorous bit-perfect testing it seems I can hear clearly up to 19khz. Above that and I'm not too sure, I should try in a quieter environment when I get the chance (my PC fans are not dead-silent). 

In the browser I could hear all of them, but now after reading the post above me, I'm not so sure.

19 and the ones above 20 didn't sound quite how I would expect.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kalston 

Turns out I can hear 22khz in the browser loud and clear but not when I dl the .wav file and play it in foobar with ASIO (bit perfect setup), so I blame Win 7 crappy resampling :)

After what I've read about Vista/7's resampling (like this http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=86676 ) I'm not really surprised. 

 

Even though I can hear a lot (too many) things such as PSUs, monitors and whatnot, I was still surprised to be able to pick up 22khz being 22yo. Sure I took care of my ears for the most part but it still seemed fishy. 

 

So with rigorous bit-perfect testing it seems I can hear clearly up to 19khz. Above that and I'm not too sure, I should try in a quieter environment when I get the chance (my PC fans are not dead-silent). 

Thanks a lot. Exactly what I suspected. E.g. bad resampling could cause aliasing and all kinds of distortion products which could be heard, but this has nothing to do with being able to hear 22 or even 23 kHz tones. Also, who knows what happened to the files that can be found online .. lossy codecs .. flash player .. --> crap.

Ideally you should have Win 7 configured to output at 48 kHz or 96 kHz sampling rate and connect a DAC which supports those samples rates to avoid resampling.
 

Anyway, imo the poll results are meaningless.

My Win 7 is usually configured to output 48khz (mostly because of my many games with 48khz audio ) and I use ASIO for both music and video playback so I rarely change the value. But it turns out the files on this site are 44.1khz. 

Oh and btw, I ran the same test on XP some time ago and definitely couldn't hear past 19khz, so either XP wasn't resampling, either it had better resampling. 

Anyway this reminds me that I'll have to check whether it affects the sound quality of my games that don't have 48khz audio, I never thought the artefacts would be THAT obvious. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by xnor 

 

Thanks a lot. Exactly what I suspected. E.g. bad resampling could cause aliasing and all kinds of distortion products which could be heard, but this has nothing to do with being able to hear 22 or even 23 kHz tones. Also, who knows what happened to the files that can be found online .. lossy codecs .. flash player .. --> crap.

 

Ideally you should have Win 7 configured to output at 48 kHz or 96 kHz sampling rate and connect a DAC which supports those samples rates to avoid resampling.
 

Anyway, imo the poll results are meaningless.

 

I think minimum level change and simultaneous dynamic range tests would be more interesting - the former being easily available on audiocheck.net.  The latter, hmm...  Basically what I envision is two tones playing at the same time, with an increasing difference in level between them.  What is the lowest that the quiet one can be heard relative to the louder one?  That should give a good idea of ability to perceive low-level detail - although I would suspect that the transducer would play an important role in this.  Masking from distortion or noise may raise the level.

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/hearing.html

Here is a test that pretty revealing since it allows you to map a curve of your hearing ability at various dB. 

The mosquito files are just as fishy today as they were when posted over a year ago in a similar thread.  Though I can hear their supposed 22khz clip, I do not for a second believe it to truly be 22khz.  Since my audiologist tested me as hearing to 19k, I voted "no," even though with these tests the answer is "yes." 

Up to 19khz, there is an obvious increase in pitch between the tones.  After this, the pitch seems to almost go DOWN - I'd be willing to wager that the sound we are hearing is some kind of artifact from file creation, compression, playback, etc., and not the actual tone

Quote:

Originally Posted by El_Doug 

The mosquito files are just as fishy today as they were when posted over a year ago in a similar thread.  Though I can hear their supposed 22khz clip, I do not for a second believe it to truly be 22khz.  Since my audiologist tested me as hearing to 19k, I voted "no," even though with these tests the answer is "yes." 

 

Up to 19khz, there is an obvious increase in pitch between the tones.  After this, the pitch seems to almost go DOWN - I'd be willing to wager that the sound we are hearing is some kind of artifact from file creation, compression, playback, etc., and not the actual tone

The WAV and MP3 format 22 kHz tones are really 22 kHz, but the OGG is only 20 kHz. I do not know if this is an encoding problem, or an error by the people who created the files.

If you hear the pitch going down, then it is probably a problem in the player software, or the result of low quality sample rate conversion/DAC (especially with onboard audio).

ok is it weird that i can hear 21 khz but not 20 khz and 22 khz? im a bit worried since i can hear perfectly anything below 20 khz but it gets weird when i go to 20 - 22 khz

20 khz - no sound

21 khz - faint but recognizable sound

22-khz - no sound at all

is it weird? should i get my ears check? im 18 btw :3

LAME mp3 never goes up to 22k IIRC. Waste of bits. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Password 

ok is it weird that i can hear 21 khz but not 20 khz and 22 khz? im a bit worried since i can hear perfectly anything below 20 khz but it gets weird when i go to 20 - 22 khz

 

20 khz - no sound

21 khz - faint but recognizable sound

22-khz - no sound at all

 

is it weird? should i get my ears check? im 18 btw :3

Don't worry about it. As others have said, any anomalies can likely be attributed to the method of reproduction rather than your hearing. Even if it were, not hearing 20khz is hardly a sign of bad hearing!

Male, 21, ~19KHz