Perhaps. I'm not too convinced those all can be detected from a headphone system though. Sub 20 Hz signals are felt through the body (i.e. chest or bone conduction), which a headphone on your ears can't really reproduce, but speakers most certainly can. I've read a paper that the resonant frequency of the fluid of your eyes can be resonated at high frequencies and can thus be detected, but again headphones don't affect your eyes, speakers can. Ultasonic cleaners have other parts that make lower frequency sounds that we can hear, but that doesn't mean we can hear ultrasonic frequencies.
At least for me headphones are for listening to music and not to earthquakes or bats. So what Tim De Paravicini mentioned in that interview does not make sense to me. Still timing may be important for hearing related to music and it may extend the standard spectrum but I am still looking for any real literature which really confirms that scientifically.
Headphones, as well as the speakers, are both transducers, both can be described as some sort of engine, if you like. Both have membrane, sound signature and technical characteristics of both can be tweaked and tuned.
Admittedly, Tim was talking about digital vs. analogue in conjuction/relatin to human hearing, and how much/little is known and published about it.
Tim de Paravicini knew very well what he was talking about and why he was saying that, I could believe that there was more to what he was saying in the interviews than it perhaps meets the eye, so to speak.
I, for one, do not subscribe to the notion that one transducer (headphone in this case) is deemed to be not capable of reproducing some of those sensations, or all of it, given that the source is of the certain character(istics) and quality, and given that all links in the audio chain (together with the transducer at the end of the chain) have the right technical characteristics.
I would bet that that it (transducer of sorts, happens to be the headphone) might actually be capable of it.
To me, it actually does not make sense that one membrane housed in the box or some sort of body, or suspended physically (speaker) can reproduce one thing, and at the same time - the headphone (membrane on contraption close to your ears) - cannot - and I am not discussing the resonance of the eye fluids (neither did De Paravicini, but bones and similar).
Why do you think he mentioned the ultrasonic cleaner and tinnitus, and how come that he mentioned just that (other end of the freq. spectrum) ? You mean that there are some other parts in the cleaner that have no relation to the sound propagation causing the effect he mentions ? What other parts ?
Since I have had brief contact with Tim recently on facebook (one facebook-, audio dedicated group) - we could perhaps ask the man himself, or first read the interviews with him prior to almost dismissing what he is (or anyone else, for that matter) saying on the subject ?
