[DiscoProJoe]

1. Click this link:
 
http://www.wavtones.com/functiongenerator.php
 
2. Enter the desired tone pitch (frequency) into the "frequency" space. (You can enter any value from 0.00000001 Hz to 22050 Hz)
 
3. Click the gray-colored "Download .wav file" button
 
4. Download it to your desktop
 
5. Plug your best pair of headphones into your computer
 
6. Set your volume to a medium-low level
 
7. Open the file and enjoy the tone
 
8. Repeat steps 2, 3, 4, and 7 with a different frequency. On very high and very low pitches, you may need to turn up your volume to hear it (or feel it).
 
9. Repeat step 8 until you've gotten your kicks
 
10. Post a reply to this thread and tell us how high and how low you could hear, which headphones and computer you used, which volume levels you could hear them at, etc.
 
 
---------------------------------------------------------------
As for me...
 
I used my V-Moda M-100 headphones with my old Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop.
 
When using a medium-low volume level of 8%, I could hear up to 17,000 Hz, could hear a pitch down to 15 Hz, and could feel a rumble down to 13 Hz.
 
I could hear 18,000 Hz with the volume at 14%, could hear 19,000 Hz with the volume at 27%, could hear 20,000 Hz at 64% volume, and could hear 21,000 Hz with the volume at 100%.
 
I could feel a rumble at 10 Hz with the volume at 10%, could feel a rumble at 5 Hz with the volume at 25%, could feel a rumble at 4 Hz at 32% volume, at 3 Hz at 45% volume, at 2.5 Hz at 75% volume, at 2 Hz at 85% volume, and at 1.5 Hz at 95% volume.
 
Cool stuff! 

  Give it a try....

 

[DiscoProJoe]

You could also post your age, since one's hearing tends to degrade naturally over time. I'm 37, by the way.

 

[snellemin]

I messed around a bit.  I believe I got down to 3 hz with my Sony MDR-V6.  Below that I'm not sure if I'm hearing the actual tone or speaker shuffle.
 
So,
 
PC:  HP EliteDesk 800 G1 ultra slim desktop
waveform: sine
frequency set: 3hz
level set: -1
duration: 5 sec
Amp: IBasso D7 with gain on high and max volume.
Amp: Topping TP32, input comes from IBasso D7 and max volume.
Age: 39

 

[RRod]

Pretty sure you're not hearing 3Hz as a tone.

 

[snellemin]

  Pretty sure you're not hearing 3Hz as a tone.

 
You are probably right.  I do still hear 10hz.  Being a Basshead is a decease and never really goes away.  Growing up, I remember my neighbors across the street asking me to tone down the tracks a bit, cause items were vibrating in their house.  Track 3 and 21(Jurassic Lunch) on the Great Fantasy Adventure Album would do it all the time.  

 

[stv014]

It is not easy to test the audibility of very low frequency tones, because distortion from the headphone drivers may become audible before the tone itself. It would ideally need something like the LCD-2, which has both very good low frequency extension, and low distortion at high SPL. If you really only used an MDR-V6, then it is likely that you indeed just heard the distortion even at 10 Hz. According to the equal loudness contours, the typical threshold of audibility at 20 Hz is about 73 dB, and simply extending the slope of the curve to 10 Hz estimates a threshold of above 90 dB SPL there (in reality, the roll-off probably accelerates, so it is an optimistic estimate). Since the MDR-V6 attenuates 10 Hz by more than 15 dB, it needs to be driven at above the 105 dB level to produce an actual SPL at 10 Hz that reaches 90 dB, and at such high levels it was measured to have distortion in the range of tens of percents; these Benchmark Media measurements suggest it is about equal amount of second and third order distortion. Looking at the equal loudness contour again, it takes only 3% or less third order distortion for the 30 Hz harmonic (threshold < 60 dB SPL) to be audible before the 10 Hz tone (threshold > 90 dB SPL).

 

[castleofargh]

8. Repeat steps 2, 3, 4, and 7 with a different frequency. On very high and very low pitches, you may need to turn up your volume to hear it (or feel it).

nope nope nope!
the idea of turning up the volume if you don't hear something is a very bad idea. you can damage you gear, but also your ears with some headphones.
 
the right way to go at this IMO is to test something like a 1 or 2khz tone(test a few values in the medium in case you specific IEM/headphone is very recessed at one particular frequency). set it as pretty loud knowing that every other tone on both ends of the spectrum will now "feel"(but not be) much quieter. so you set that as your highest limit and actually know for a fact how loud the signal is and if your making some dangerous excess.

 

[Don Hills]

Be aware that at LF, it doesn't take much for the distortion products to equal or exceed the loudness of the fundamental tone. For example, for a 10 Hz tone, 10% 2nd harmonic distortion will sound as loud as the fundamental. That level of distortion is not unusual for a speaker or headphone driven to levels loud enough to make the fundamental audible. The situation gets worse if the transducer's frequency response is falling with frequency. If the response is falling at, say, 12 dB/octave, which is a typical figure for a transducer below its fundamental resonance, then it only takes about 1% distortion to make the 2nd harmonic audible.

 

[DiscoProJoe]

  Be aware that at LF, it doesn't take much for the distortion products to equal or exceed the loudness of the fundamental tone.

 
Well, when playing around with the LF tones with M-100s plugged into my laptop, it certainly didn't sound like harmonic distortion. And it absolutely didn't sound like 30 Hz, as some are suggesting.
 
Below 15 Hz when feeling the rumble, I never heard any actual pitches. So if there was any distortion, I couldn't notice any of it occurring at or above 15 Hz.
 
All I could tell was...as I went lower and lower (and all the way down to 1.5 Hz), the rumble had a deeper and deeper feeling to it. I never felt anything that seemed less "deep" as I went lower, never heard any amp clipping, never heard nor felt the headphone drivers bottoming out, and never heard any crackling or popping noises.
 
On the specs for my M-100s, it says the frequency response is from 5 - 30,000 Hz, by the way. If any of you have a pair of M-100s, give this tone stuff a try and post your results here, just so we're comparing apples to apples.
 
By contrast, I also tried this test with my cheap little 2.1-channel Edifier desktop stereo. At very high and very low frequencies, I definitely got harmonic distortion -- particularly above 17,000 and below 20 Hz when I tried cranking it up. This makes sense, considering this desktop stereo has a THD rating of 10%!  This unit also puts out tens of watts as the speakers handle them, as opposed to mere milliwatts being sent from my PC soundcard to the M-100s.
 
Anyway, I'd be curious to hear from anyone else who has a pair of M-100s who's tried playing these tones through them. At this point, I stand by what I said in my original post on this thread.

 

[davidsh]

What you'd hear as distortion above 17 kHz is definitely not harmonic distortion (then you'd be able to hear 34+ kHz )

 

[stv014]

Originally Posted by DiscoProJoe /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
By contrast, I also tried this test with my cheap little 2.1-channel Edifier desktop stereo. At very high and very low frequencies, I definitely got harmonic distortion -- particularly above 17,000 and below 20 Hz when I tried cranking it up. This makes sense, considering this desktop stereo has a THD rating of 10%!

 
It probably does not, it is just the distortion level at which the maximum power is specified, so that it can look higher because at that level the amplifier is already clipping. On the other hand, low frequency distortion is likely to be even more of a problem with loudspeakers than with headphones.
 
Audible distortion on a high frequency tone is most likely aliasing and/or IMD because of DAC or software issues.

 

[gerelmx1986]

This demonstrates Intel HD audio is not really HD... i can get only up to 11KHz with MDR-1R and XBA-H3 sony headphones labeled for Hi-res audi on a 2014 VAIO fit multi-flip PC, will try my tone files on my A17 walkman to see, tried this with a 2009 Dell laptop with intel HD audio as well and the same thing

 

[gerelmx1986]

Here are results
 
VAIO laptop 2014 Intel HD audio driver
 
MDR-1R reached to 10KHz XBA-H3 to 11KHz
 
Sony WALKMAN NWZ-A17 (Mexican (international) version)
 
DSEE HX OFF--> MDR-1R 10 KHZ, XBA-H3, 11KHZ
DSEE HX ON--> MDR-1R 17KHZ, XBA-H3 21KHZ
 
that is unamped what i was able to hear, definitively MDR-1R need amping from A17 i could hear to 19 KHz but was a very very faint piiiiiiiip.....
 
i'm 28 yrs old, have some sort of hearing loss in my right ear due to being blind in one eye (premature birth induced retianl detachment)

 

[DiscoProJoe]

What you'd hear as distortion above 17 kHz is definitely not harmonic distortion (then you'd be able to hear 34+ kHz

)

 
On my desktop stereo, if I tried cranking up the 20 kHz tone, I'd start getting these weird tones that sounded like 5 kHz and 10 kHz, or something like that. Not sure if that was harmonic distortion or just some kind of amp clipping. Of course with M-100s plugged into my PC soundcard, I never heard any of that.

 

[Don Hills]

   
On my desktop stereo, if I tried cranking up the 20 kHz tone, I'd start getting these weird tones that sounded like 5 kHz and 10 kHz, or something like that. Not sure if that was harmonic distortion or just some kind of amp clipping. Of course with M-100s plugged into my PC soundcard, I never heard any of that.

 
That would be intermodulation distortion. That's where a source of non-linearity, such as clipping, mixes (multiplies) two tones to produce new frequencies, typically the result of the sum and difference of the two tones. For example, a 20 KHz tone and a  44.1 KHz tone will produce tones of 68.2 KHz and 4.1 KHz.