[1] I don't care if there are pitch shifting artifacts. I'm not going to listen to music this way. I just want to get some idea what this content actually sounds like. Is it hiss? Is it sizzle? Is it harmonic ringing like a bell? Is it horrible crackling?
[2] For a sound science group there's a surprising resistance to someone wanting to do an experiment. Isn't that what we're here for?.
1. That's a contradiction! How can you get some idea of "what this content actually sounds like" if that content is heavily contaminated by pitch shifting artefacts? If you hear say "ringing like a bell" with some "horrible crackling" how do you know if that "crackling" is actual content or just a pitch-shifting artefact? Or for that matter, maybe the actual sound is nothing at all like a ringing bell but the pitch-shifting has distorted it and made it sound like a bell? You seem to think that with pitch-shifting you'll clearly hear your original signal plus a bit of hiss, crackling or distortion but that's likely what you'd hear if you pitch-shifted by say a 5th or so. Pitch-shift by two or three octaves and the original signal can be virtually unrecognisable!
2. No, that is absolutely NOT what we are here for! "What we're here for" is to advocate the actual science/facts and experiments which provide reliable results/evidence. Most of us here, INCLUDING YOU, spend a considerable amount of time arguing against experiments which can provide unreliable and misleading results! What's the difference between you saying you don't care about pitch-shifting artefacts and an audiophile saying they don't care about biases when doing a sighted A/B experiment??
Generally, HF energy is falling ( very approximately, general trend ) at about 6dB/octave - but , although rare, there can be exceptions in > 20 kHz range.
Just in case anyone is not aware, this statement by analogsurvivor is nonsense. Even if we ignore the other relevant variables, then most instruments' high and ultrasonic frequency production rolls-off far more than 6dB/octave. For example, >20kHz harmonic content accounts for about 0.4% of the total energy produced by say a violin and most instruments are broadly similar. A few metallic instruments produce considerably more ultrasonic content but that's mostly in the form of near-random noise (cymbals for example) and even if it is clear harmonic content (glocks, gamelan, etc) then we've still got to consider those other relevant variables. Ultrasonic content arriving at an audience seating position is going to be massively absorbed by just about everything, even the air itself. For example, let's take a glockenspiel in an orchestra playing a high note with a fundamental frequency of 2.5kHz. The harmonic at 40kHz will, according to analogsurvivor, be 24dB lower (6dB/octave x 4 octaves) but at the likely listener's position, it's actually going to be reduced by about 40dB just from air absorption alone. Factor in absorption caused by other materials, the fact that the 40kHz harmonic is going to be somewhat lower than the fundamental to start with and our 40kHz harmonic is going to be down in level by at least 60dB and probably more like 100dB, well below the noise floor.
G
