[megabigeye]

Haha! No less offensive, but much more funnier!

 

[Redcarmoose]

.

 

[megabigeye]

Maybe we should turn the talk back to IEMs...

 

[Brooko]

It really saddens me that frequency response graphs start at 20Hz, since I can feel and 'hear' everything down to 1hZ if the headphone is capable... (just not so much over 16kHz )

There’s a reason they only go to 20Hz - it’s the generally accepted limit to most normal peoples hearing. The lowest frequency ever recorded as being human audible was 12Hz but that was in an anechoic chamber (if I recall the conversation). Googling makes little mention - so may have no basis in fact. I can remember the discussion though.

I think we can safely say that below 10Hz is felt rather than heard, and you’d have to turn it up so high - the rest of the music would deafen you.

I think the point is that unless you’re listening to tones, virtually no real instruments go below 10Hz (there are only two pipe organs in the world which can produce 8Hz). And to “hear” (and by this I mean feel) the super low tones you’d need to have the playback very loud.

If you’re talking electronic music - again, the rest of the music is going to mask the super low bass - so there is little point having transducers (or graphs) going that low.

 

[castleofargh]

There’s a reason they only go to 20Hz - it’s the generally accepted limit to most normal peoples hearing. The lowest frequency ever recorded as being human audible was 12Hz but that was in an anechoic chamber (if I recall the conversation). Googling makes little mention - so may have no basis in fact. I can remember the discussion though.

I think we can safely say that below 10Hz is felt rather than heard, and you’d have to turn it up so high - the rest of the music would deafen you.

I think the point is that unless you’re listening to tones, virtually no real instruments go below 10Hz (there are only two pipe organs in the world which can produce 8Hz). And to “hear” (and by this I mean feel) the super low tones you’d need to have the playback very loud.

If you’re talking electronic music - again, the rest of the music is going to mask the super low bass - so there is little point having transducers (or graphs) going that low.

this, but also the fact that measuring at really low frequency is a bit more difficult(not just get a number, but a relevant one).
as to audibility, I'd bet on most people feeling either the IEM or headphone physically shaking instead of an air wave being heard. or they're probably hearing the harmonic distortions coming from that sub signal(so actually hearing higher frequencies). or just pushing the signal to silly levels just to say "I heard this". many people damaged their ears pushing ultrasounds at stupidly high amplitudes just to prove how good their ears are(or were before doing that), so I don't see why it wouldn't also be done for sub freqs below 20Hz. but a typical human loses close to 10dB per 10Hz below 50Hz in sensitivity(with the loss increasing as we get at lower and lower freq). so beside pretending that quiet stuff are a big deal, I believe measuring to 20Hz is already more than what most people will ever need to care about.

plus just at a practical level, most of the time the general curve below 20Hz can somehow be guessed from the graph above 20Hz. it's not too often that we'll have a massive roll off in the subs and suddenly 10Hz rises by 30dB. those jokes might happen on speakers in a room, but the acoustic concerning IEMs and Headphones doesn't even have the size to start playing with low freqs. the driver can move those amplitudes at sub freqs or not, and we have a good seal or not. that's about all we can really have affecting low freqs in IEMs AFAIK.

 

[Redcarmoose]

1)

Noble Khan


Specifications

Frequency Range: 20-25,0000 Hz

Nominal Impedance: 19 ohms

Sound Pressure Level (SPL): 109 dB





2)

Sony IER-Z1R


DRIVER UNIT

Hybrid

IMPEDANCE (OHM)

40ohms (1kHz)

FREQUENCY RESPONSE

3Hz-100,000Hz


3)

Empire Ears Phantom


5 Proprietary Empire Balanced Armature Drivers

2 Low, 1 Mid, 1 High, 1 Super High

5-Way synX Crossover Network

A.R.C. Resonance Mitigation Technology

Impedance: 10 ohms @ 1kHz

Frequency Response: 10 Hz - 40kHz

Sensitivity 117dB @ 1kHz, 1mW

UPOCC 26AWG Handcrafted Cable by Effect Audio




If anything increased frequency band-wiidth is a wonderful marketing tool. People feel it’s an advance and even if they don’t understand the human hearing science, it offers them a feel good insurance that they are buying the current technology.


But finding out we have hearing mechanisms beyond what comes in from the ear canal is another edge science which seems to be in it’s infancy? The fact that we feel vibrations in our feet and arms, leading to a closer relationship with the music.


The whole subject also aligns up with High Resolution, bigger than 16/44.1 sound files. Somehow folks believe the sound files are now responsible for added resolution not picked up by the older technology IEMs. It’s maybe not going away anytime soon filling the dreams that headphone marketing staff have been wishing for. It’s always “something” to separate new from old, regardless of validity. IMO

 

[megabigeye]

It is amusing (I guess) that IEM/headphone manufacturers are so focused on extended frequency response. I mean, I think my hearing tops out at something like 16kHz, let alone 25kHz, 40kHz, or... 100kHz? Really? That's hilarious! It's cute that they think I should even care.
Not to mention that probably 99.999% of recorded music doesn't have any information that high. A few months ago I started a thread about the frequency range of music, which has some pretty interesting information in it.

I have also "heard infrasonic frequencies" (14Hz? 16Hz? I can't remember) while listening to a sine wave sweep and I was kind of curious what I was actually hearing. Of course, I can't even remember which headphones I was using at the time, whether they were full-sized or IEMs. Over the years I've read a few explanations-- that I'm hearing the driver "pistoning," or that the driver is somehow tuned to "fake" those notes. Maybe there was one more explanation that I can't recall at the moment. Neither of the explanations really answers my question, though: the pistoning idea implied that the tone didn't actually change when this occurs, but I could clearly hear different tones; the "faking" idea, I think, was referring to a manipulated frequency response that would allow some notes to be more readily apparent in comparison to other frequencies-- e.g., dipping the mids in order to make the bass sound bigger-- but a) I don't think this would cause me to "hear" subsonic tones, and b) I was listening to pure tones, not music. I also wonder if perhaps the tones I was hearing were not as low as what was claimed?

Anyway, this is all getting kinda far from the topic of IEMs vs headphones.

 

[GREQ]

There’s a reason they only go to 20Hz - it’s the generally accepted limit to most normal peoples hearing. The lowest frequency ever recorded as being human audible was 12Hz but that was in an anechoic chamber (if I recall the conversation). Googling makes little mention - so may have no basis in fact. I can remember the discussion though.

I think we can safely say that below 10Hz is felt rather than heard, and you’d have to turn it up so high - the rest of the music would deafen you.

I think the point is that unless you’re listening to tones, virtually no real instruments go below 10Hz (there are only two pipe organs in the world which can produce 8Hz). And to “hear” (and by this I mean feel) the super low tones you’d need to have the playback very loud.

If you’re talking electronic music - again, the rest of the music is going to mask the super low bass - so there is little point having transducers (or graphs) going that low.

So just as a sanity check, I did some manual tone sweeps with my most bass-capable headphones and a few others for contrast.
I am definitely able to hear/feel tones down to about 8-9hz (and up to about 16.5kHz)

Interestingly, most of my headphones and even IEMs had severe roll-off or simply cut off altogether around 18-20hz.
Two of my headphones in particular with stunning bass capabilities could produce pulsating sensations or tones 'audibly' down to 10hz, but below that needed an increase in volume to compensate for natural transducer roll-off.
I could 'feel' these pulsations down to 4-5 hz quite vividly, but below that it's difficult to know if they are tonal vibrations or just the transducer crapping out at the lowest extremes, so for arguments sake we can ignore everything below 5hz.

So I am starting to strongly suspect that either the 'accepted standard' of human hearing starting at 20hz is somewhat grossly inaccurate and needs updating, or I am an outlier of the norm and have highly sensitive bass hearing.
... or perhaps some of these so-called 'hearing tests' are done with inappropriate transducers that are simply not up to the job.

Interesting either way it leans, there's still so much we don't know about audio and hearing. As a science, it's in it's infancy in comparison to others.

 

[Redcarmoose]

We are all outliers here.

 

[Brooko]

So you were listening to tones right. How does that relate to music?

 

[megabigeye]

Apparently there's a phenomenon called "doubling" wherein two tones an octave apart are played simultaneously and will allow a listener to hear frequencies they'd otherwise be unable to hear. I'm not going to pretend to really understand that, but allegedly that's how you can hear that ultra low tone played in an organ (which, by the way, I think is closer to 16Hz, not 10, at least according to some other Head-Fi users and a quick Google search). This is all described in the thread I linked above.

Otherwise, yes, I'm talking about listening to tones, not music, the significance of which is simply that I can "hear" those tones and that the headphones can reproduce them.

 

[GREQ]

So you were listening to tones right. How does that relate to music?

Music = tones.
I really don't get what point you're trying to get to with that question.
Seems like you're either playing devils' advocate, or you just don't believe me.

 

[Guidostrunk]

When I started my journey in headphones 10 years ago on here, I went the iem route. After dropping $1200 on a some Earsonics EM3 customs, and close to $700 on on my portable rig(Ray Samuels p51, and dB solo dac.)
I got curious about cans. Sold my portable gear and spent half the money for imo. Leaps and bounds better sound. When I made the switch , I bought HD650, Schiit Valhalla, and Bifrost. Never looked back.

It was cool the sound quality you got for something so small and portable, but imo there's no comparison. Bigger soundstage, way more dimensional, things just sound more real and textured.
All subjective though.
Cheers.

 

[megabigeye]

According to Wikipedia, human hearing has been confirmed down to 12Hz.

According to this article human hearing has been confirmed down to 2.5Hz! Which is insane to me! Also, these people seem to have made the ultimate IEM: one that's a 15" subwoofer connected to an 8 meter tube connected to your ear.

And according to this guy, people can become more sensitive to infrasonic frequencies with age and with more exposure to those frequencies. Unfortunately he doesn't have any citations for his claim.

This all makes me start to wonder why 20Hz is almost universally accepted as the minimum threshold.

 

[Brooko]

Music = tones.
I really don't get what point you're trying to get to with that question.
Seems like you're either playing devils' advocate, or you just don't believe me.

Not devils advocate - just putting a measure of realism into the conversation. What you’re doing is listening to single tones, and you increase the volume until you hear it. But if you were listening to actual music -

1. The increased volume would blow your head off
2. The rest of the music would mask these low tones you talk about wanting to hear (sub 20Hz)

Plus I thought we’d already established that practically no musical instrument goes that low anyway - so what’s the point? Even a bass guitar sits at 40Hz. A pipe organ could go down to 10Hz, but unless you are exclusively listening to baroque playing dubstep ........ I think you get the point