[chihwahli]

I saw this headphone and the specs:
AK T5P generation 2, it's frequency range is from 5 Hz to 50 KHz.

Higher frequenties should have some influence in our brain, as our sub conscious brain processes a lot more than we hear / see, etc.

Player specs only write down what frequency files (FLAC, etc) it can process and they do not tell you the output frequencies. Would be nice if people write down those really measuered frequencies at the output. Sorry I am sometimes so in the details......

Wondering: is it known if there are any amplifier able to process such high frequenties?

 

[Modo]

Some humans, especially children, can hear to about 20 KHz, maybe a little over. Whether the headphone description says 40 KHz or 50 KHz is pure marketing. Those frequencies do exactly zero to the actual sound quality, and are often not even present in recordings. Ignore the snake oil.

 

[serman005]

What information exactly are you proposing the human hearing apparatus can process from 20 Khz to 50 Khz?

 

[chihwahli]

Human ear can differentiate sounds up to about 20KHz. (The frequenties that are beyond 20KHz and above, our brain is also doing things with it. I think) As we age our hearing degrades and higher frequenties are no longer identified by us. The difference between positively hearing and identifying a certain frequency that are played/ heard, and on the other side, very high freq. sounds being played having an effect on our mood, etc. are different things.

This study for example tells that inaudible sounds are accepted by the listener as positive....
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10848570

Another example:
Skin care uses high freq sounds to fight against skin deceases:
http://www.thenaturalartofskincare.ca/skin-care-articles/highfrequency

Interesting not? It seems high frequency sounds well above 20KHz does positive things. An area that audiophile yet have not discovered yet....

 

[chihwahli]

so, losing our perception of certain freq. and positively identifying them is not bad. Our brain still processes them =)

 

[chihwahli]

Personally I think the next quantum leap in sound quality is well beyong DSD, FLAC XXX bit what so ever. It will be a recorder that identifies the square waveform and writes down this information as mathematical formula! that way you can capture the wave form perfectly!!!! Beat that DSD and FLAC

Anyone with a few billion to start such research company please?? =) we need better sound.

Why:
https://www.mojo-audio.com/blog/dsd-vs-pcm-myth-vs-truth/
DSD and PCM, cannot do it perfectly. Eventually the file size becomes thebiggest issue. Next to t=hat it is still an aproxiation. a formula is maybe only 20KB compared to DSD512 to capture the same wave form... and certain things just outside the waveformcan be captured also. Some might think those sounds are artifacts or by noise, but maybe that belongs in the sound of the instrument also...
(don't pin me on this, I am just a greeny....expressing my thoughts)

 

[afreekindazone]

Even if some headphones such as the Sony MDR Z7 can reach 100khz, humans can't hear it ! Only bats and dogs among a few other species, have the ability to hear above 20khz.

All that hype about Hi-Res audio is often misunderstood, when playing a 24/192khz flac file, you won't hear 192khz, not even the half of it at 96khz. You will only hear a recording of up to 20khz (maybe slightly above at 22-24khz as per graphs), BUT with better dynamics compared to 16/44.1

 

[Alvadora]

Even if some headphones such as the Sony MDR Z7 can reach 100khz, humans can't hear it ! Only bats and dogs among a few other species, have the ability to hear above 20khz.

All that hype about Hi-Res audio is often misunderstood, when playing a 24/192khz flac file, you won't hear 192khz, not even the half of it at 96khz. You will only hear a recording of up to 20khz (maybe slightly above at 22-24khz as per graphs), BUT with better dynamics compared to 16/44.1

It is true that human can only hear up to approximately 20kHz or less but the 24/192kHz mentioned by you in a FLAC file is the bit depth and sample rate. 24/192 means the file is 24-bit with a 192kHz sample rate, it has nothing to do with the frequency of the sound.

 

[serman005]

Human ear can differentiate sounds up to about 20KHz. (The frequenties that are beyond 20KHz and above, our brain is also doing things with it. I think) As we age our hearing degrades and higher frequenties are no longer identified by us. The difference between positively hearing and identifying a certain frequency that are played/ heard, and on the other side, very high freq. sounds being played having an effect on our mood, etc. are different things.

This study for example tells that inaudible sounds are accepted by the listener as positive....
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10848570

Another example:
Skin care uses high freq sounds to fight against skin deceases:
http://www.thenaturalartofskincare.ca/skin-care-articles/highfrequency

Interesting not? It seems high frequency sounds well above 20KHz does positive things. An area that audiophile yet have not discovered yet....

The mechanism of action of low-frequency radio waves (eg, 30-50 Khz) on skin is entirely thermal, as far as all good peer-reviewed published data shows thus far. There is no direct effect other than thermal known to occur on fibroblasts, macrophages, monocytes, or any other type of dermal cell--as far as has been so far published--nor, for that matter is there on the epidermis. Similarly, the mechanism of high-frequency is also felt to be entirely thermal, which is why it is used by clinicians primarily in electrosurgery now. It is an excellent, efficient cauterizer. High-frequency electrical current is not presently used in the normal course of acne management, but is used in some forms mostly in spas doing facials. Again, if there is an effect on the dermis in the spa setting, and that is debatable, it is likely to be due to direct heat transfer to collagen and elastin fibers. Lastly, there is no published, peer-reviewed data showing that frequencies in the 20-50 Khz range can directly be processed by hair cells or any other part of the hearing apparatus. It would be a very, very difficult study to do, for obvious reasons. Now, whether these frequencies can have some other effect on things like thoughts and mood (as some other forms of energy have, in the latter case, been shown to do) is up in the air, in my view. If you are interested in reading more science about this sort of thing, you might read about the Neurostar FDA-approved device for recalcitrant depression--it is very interesting indeed.

 

[afreekindazone]

It is true that human can only hear up to approximately 20kHz or less but the 24/192kHz mentioned by you in a FLAC file is the bit depth and sample rate. 24/192 means the file is 24-bit with a 192kHz sample rate, it has nothing to do with the frequency of the sound.

That's a more complicated theory, but you still won't hear these 24/192khz and actually the guy who says capable of telling the difference between 24/96 and 24/192 is a liar.

Most of us still find the task to be hard between 320kbs (Mp3/Ogg) and 1411kpbs (CD Quality), there could be some mastering differences between CD Quality and Hi-Res depending on releases, but if both comes from the same source file, you won't be able to tell the difference.

SO !!!....anything related to frequencies above 20khz and the real gain from Hi-Res are just science facts and are not verifiable from a human point of view. Only a few animal species and your computer can tell the differences

 

[chihwahli]

@afreekindazone

The wall we eventually have to break down for better sound is the wall what you perceive. There is a reason why we only use 15% of our brain (really, I think i use more =p). We are just to accustomed to the things now. And no longer thinking outside our small box. It's the people who dare to think outside the frames of culture, etc, etc that archive unbelievable results!

 

[Alvadora]

That's a more complicated theory, but you still won't hear these 24/192khz and actually the guy who says capable of telling the difference between 24/96 and 24/192 is a liar.

Most of us still find the task to be hard between 320kbs (Mp3/Ogg) and 1411kpbs (CD Quality), there could be some mastering differences between CD Quality and Hi-Res depending on releases, but if both comes from the same source file, you won't be able to tell the difference.

SO !!!....anything related to frequencies above 20khz and the real gain from Hi-Res are just science facts and are not verifiable from a human point of view. Only a few animal species and your computer can tell the differences

It's not about being a more complicated theory. The meaning of 24/192kHz or 24/96kHz does not reflect the frequency the file can process up to. I can have a 24/96kHz file that only plays music with a range of 20Hz to 20kHz. What the 96 or 192kHz meant in sampling rate is which how many times your Digital Analog Converter (DAC) or compresser is processing the file per second. If I record a live performance right now, the analog signal is processed and compressed into a digital signal (imagine a smooth curve turned into a multitude of stairs replicating a similar shape). The number of "steps" processed per second is the sampling rate. It has asolutely nothing to do with the audio frequency that you are hearing.

Also, I am not debating whether a person can hear the difference between a 24/96, 24/192 or 320kbps mp3 files. I'm just trying to let you know the difference between what is bit-depth/sampling rate and the audible frequency. Just because they are both measured using frequencies (aka Hertz) doesn't mean they are the same thing

 

[ProtegeManiac]

I saw this headphone and the specs:
AK T5P generation 2, it's frequency range is from 5 Hz to 50 KHz.

Higher frequenties should have some influence in our brain, as our sub conscious brain processes a lot more than we hear / see, etc.

Player specs only write down what frequency files (FLAC, etc) it can process and they do not tell you the output frequencies. Would be nice if people write down those really measuered frequencies at the output. Sorry I am sometimes so in the details......

Wondering: is it known if there are any amplifier able to process such high frequenties?

The first question prior to all that is whether the material you listen to even has anything above 20,000hz to begin with, since the ADC and the mastering could filter that out. Even some playback equipment can potentially filter these out.

Assuming you even have anything above 20,000hz in the material, it's less likely that the effect is directly on the brain. In some cases what they do is make the drivers work harder, since every cycle ie what hertz is how many times the driver has to move to reproduce that frequency (and move farther out if it's a dynamic driver). There was a white paper from the 2000s that in short basically stated that upsampling DACs weren't necessarily more high fidelity but they're adding high frequency noise inaudible to the human ear but it influences how the driver moves, and that's how the overall response that is audible is altered, and it's likely that this is what those very high frequencies will do primarily.

When it comes to the transducers it's only tangentially indicative of what a driver can do, ie, most drivers that can do very high frequencies also tend to just be smoother (ie no too tall spikes nor deep crevices somewhere around 20,000 and higher), but most reliably this is at best something that applies more to electrostats, which don't need to "pump" back and forth as hard as dynamic drivers, which is where the driver distortion happens whenever these try to reproduce anything at the far ends of the range if it isn't a specialized driver like a subwoofer. Electrostats aren't very good with the low end in terms of outright output levels so you can see Martin Logans with dynamic driver subwoofers, or why Magnepans at that size need the planar sub module and some people use two of those (it's kind of but not exactly the same as when somebody like Scott Buwalda will use three 12in DLS subwoofers set to very low gain and relatively low low pass crossovers, although the latter has a lot to do with managing the problem of subwoofers pulling the image of the low freqs to the rear of the car's cabin since that's where the sub is).

There is a reason why we only use 15% of our brain (really, I think i use more =p).

Uhhh...just like how "What If?" comics are not cannon in the Marvel Universe, the Black Widow X The Leader X Onslaught crossover movie is also not scientific fact. There is no sceintific evidence that the human brain is a Pandora's Box prison for the Phoenix Force that is waiting to get unlocked. The closest to that is if some kind of irradiating accident enlarges the brain like with The Leader, but what is more likely to happen is "win in chess by simulating every possible branches of outcomes before that sand runs out" or "mentally calculate pi to the nth decimal," not "wipe out humanity with a seizure" or "bring firestorms to life just by thinking it" (or "try to tear Wolverine apart at the molecular level").

 

[PointyFox]

@afreekindazone

The wall we eventually have to break down for better sound is the wall what you perceive. There is a reason why we only use 15% of our brain (really, I think i use more =p). We are just to accustomed to the things now. And no longer thinking outside our small box. It's the people who dare to think outside the frames of culture, etc, etc that archive unbelievable results!

You're implying deaf and blind people are closed-minded?

 

[Me x3]

Wondering: is it known if there are any amplifier able to process such high frequenties?

The FiiO M9 has a frequency response from 5Hz to 80kHz (-3dB)