[chewy4]

Quote:

If 10 to 20kHz is HUGE what do you call the same music with 2.5kHz to 5kHz dialed out?

Humongous I guess?

 

[bigshot]

Mountains are being made of molehills which leaves us at a loss as to how to describe mountains!

 

[chewy4]

Quote:

Mountains are being made of molehills which leaves us at a loss as to how to describe mountains!

No need to get caught up in semantics here.
 
The difference is indeed huge in terms of acceptable audio quality. I wouldn't come close to buying a pair of headphones or speakers with a 10Khz drop off. It's not just an audible differences, it's an easily audible difference. To me, that makes that dropoff a huge deal.

 

[bigshot]

Sometimes I think the ability to discuss relative differences isn't possible in home audio.
 
I simply said that the highest octave of human hearing is the least important in the audible spectrum. That is completely true. Dial out any of the octaves in the middle and instruments start to completely disappear. Dial out the top octave and you lose a little bit of harmonics. Is it audible? Yes. Slightly audible in cymbal crashes. Is it important? Well, we listen to music without the top octave all the time on the radio, in cars, on boom boxes and portable stereos. We never even think about it. But when we're talking purely in theory 14kHz is a HUGE deal.

 

[streetdragon]

Quote:

Sometimes I think the ability to discuss relative differences isn't possible in home audio.
 
I simply said that the highest octave of human hearing is the least important in the audible spectrum. That is completely true. Dial out any of the octaves in the middle and instruments start to completely disappear. Dial out the top octave and you lose a little bit of harmonics. Is it audible? Yes. Slightly audible in cymbal crashes. Is it important? Well, we listen to music without the top octave all the time on the radio, in cars, on boom boxes and portable stereos. We never even think about it. But when we're talking purely in theory 14kHz is a HUGE deal.

but when using headphones and having the ability to dial it out whenever we want, yeah it becomes very apparent and noticable on the sound quality. missing 10-20 is terrible. but missing 2-5 is unacceptable. different genres have different levels of importance in this high frequency area though, since you say its slightly audible to you, but to me its clearly audible. so in the end it is still important, though not as important as midrange.

 

[bigshot]

You have just ramped up your descriptions with "terrible" and "HUGE" being the bottom level of filtration. When you do that, you run out of adjectives quickly, so the smaller things end up sounding just as bad as the catastrophic things. This is why people get so confused reading audiophile reviews. Absolutely everything is a night and day difference. No one is able to compare two things and express the relative level of difference.

No one is saying that anyone should listen to music with the top octave filtered off. But when you're equalizing or looking to improve brightness in the sound, it's pretty handy to know that the upper range isn't the area to slave and sweat over. It also gives you a very clear indication of just how useful high end audio reviewers' advice is when they talk about how important frequencies above the range of human hearing are to sound quality, or how important response deviations are above 16kHz in headphones.

Does that make my point clearer?

 

[streetdragon]

well im saying that is exists, and should not be cut off thats all.

 

[chewy4]

Quote:

You have just ramped up your descriptions with "terrible" and "HUGE" being the bottom level of filtration. When you do that, you run out of adjectives quickly, so the smaller things end up sounding just as bad as the catastrophic things. This is why people get so confused reading audiophile reviews. Absolutely everything is a night and day difference. No one is able to compare two things and express the relative level of difference.
No one is saying that anyone should listen to music with the top octave filtered off. But when you're equalizing or looking to improve brightness in the sound, it's pretty handy to know that the upper range isn't the area to slave and sweat over. It also gives you a very clear indication of just how useful high end audio reviewers' advice is when they talk about how important frequencies above the range of human hearing are to sound quality, or how important response deviations are above 16kHz in headphones.
Does that make my point clearer?

It's just obvious that shaving off the fundamental frequencies is going to have a drastic impact, why should my descriptions be relative to that in a world where people spend thousands on micro-details? It only makes sense to stay relative to the changes in that range if that's the area the community focuses on. A molecular biologist isn't going to describe things relative to the size of the entire universe.
 
I've got plenty of adjectives though, so no need to worry about me using them up. I can send you a list of them if you're running out or something.
 
EDIT: I just remembered that my HP do have a spike in the 10Khz region, so the change would be a little bit more noticable for me than most.

 

[jaddie]

Very interesting thread, this.  
 
On the subject of the audibility of the top octave, it seems to be discussed as if we could turn that top octave on or off, like the cut off rate were a rectangular filter response.  In practice, that's not how it goes.  For example, in analog recording systems, affecting the response at 15KHz also affects 10KHz, and to a much greater extent, 20KHz.  In most cases the loss of response in the top octave is fairly broad.  The area of non-flat response often extends well below the top octave, though to a lesser extent.  How audible the total system is relates to the rate of response change and total area of response affected.  Those gentle 6dB/Octave roll-offs that result in, say -6dB at 20KHz will also be down -2.4dB at 10KHz, 1dB @ 6KHz, and that's audible.  The differences between a steep low pass filter, say 48dB/oct. at 15KHz and the same one at 20KHz may be harder to hear though.  
 
For test observations to be valid, we'd need to know the exact filter characteristics used.  Just saying you tried an EQ and could/couldn't hear it isn't really meaningful. We'd need to know what kind of EQ (peak/dip, cut, shelf), what bandwidth/Q the specific filter had, how much attenuation, what frequency it was centered at, etc.  Otherwise we're comparing very different fruit. 
 
We could also discuss average hearing loss as a function of age, as adult males loose the top octave first, and wouldn't notice its absence, where a 20 year old who's never been to a rock concert (yea, try to find one of them!) and has undamaged ears might hear up to 22KHz.  Yes, I did, and I miss those days, barely 12KHz now.  

 

[bigshot]

why should my descriptions be relative to that in a world where people spend thousands on micro-details?

That one's easy to answer! Because too many audiophiles focus on microdetails they can't really hear and leave big gaping obvious errors alone because they have no sense of proportion. Really, that is the single biggest problem in high end audio. Folks expend so much energy worrying about what they can't really hear, they have none left over for what they actually can.

 

[bigshot]

For test observations to be valid, we'd need to know the exact filter characteristics used.

I use the equalizers in Peak.

I'm really not arguing audibility. I don't know why it keeps coming back to that. My point is that the top octave isn't a sliver of sound that makes a whole lot of difference to music compared to the rest of the audible range.

If I was EQing, and a core frequency band was out by 2 dB, that would bother me much more than the top octave being out by 6 dB. *Relative importance*

 

[chewy4]

Quote:

Very interesting thread, this.
 
On the subject of the audibility of the top octave, it seems to be discussed as if we could turn that top octave on or off, like the cut off rate were a rectangular filter response. In practice, that's not how it goes. For example, in analog recording systems, affecting the response at 15KHz also affects 10KHz, and to a much greater extent, 20KHz. In most cases the loss of response in the top octave is fairly broad. The area of non-flat response often extends well below the top octave, though to a lesser extent. How audible the total system is relates to the rate of response change and total area of response affected. Those gentle 6dB/Octave roll-offs that result in, say -6dB at 20KHz will also be down -2.4dB at 10KHz, 1dB @ 6KHz, and that's audible. The differences between a steep low pass filter, say 48dB/oct. at 15KHz and the same one at 20KHz may be harder to hear though.
 
For test observations to be valid, we'd need to know the exact filter characteristics used. Just saying you tried an EQ and could/couldn't hear it isn't really meaningful. We'd need to know what kind of EQ (peak/dip, cut, shelf), what bandwidth/Q the specific filter had, how much attenuation, what frequency it was centered at, etc. Otherwise we're comparing very different fruit.
 
We could also discuss average hearing loss as a function of age, as adult males loose the top octave first, and wouldn't notice its absence, where a 20 year old who's never been to a rock concert (yea, try to find one of them!) and has undamaged ears might hear up to 22KHz. Yes, I did, and I miss those days, barely 12KHz now.

I used Audacity's low pass filter, set at 10Khz with the highest dB/oct available(48 I think), and I can hear up to about 17-18Khz(I'm young but have stood a bit too close to concert speakers a number of times).
 
Quote:

That one's easy to answer! Because too many audiophiles focus on microdetails they can't really hear and leave big gaping obvious errors alone because they have no sense of proportion. Really, that is the single biggest problem in high end audio. Folks expend so much energy worrying about what they can't really hear, they have none left over for what they actually can.

That's because the fundamentals are easy to achieve. Basically a pre-requisite to decent headphones. 
 
I'm not going to discuss the effects of dropping off fundamental frequency bands because that brings sound to a garbage level where there is no need for precise comparisons due to the fact that no audiophile would listen to it anyways.
 
The difference that a 10Khz dropoff makes is HUGE to me. You know what that's relative to. Now stop worrying about me running out of adjectives for things I don't plan on describing.

 

[bigshot]

I'm not going to discuss the effects of dropping off fundamental frequency bands because that brings sound to a garbage level where there is no need for precise comparisons due to the fact that no audiophile would listen to it anyways.

Except of course for church organs, which have fundamentals beyond the abiity of many very good headphones to reproduce accurately.

By the way, the BIG difference between good headphones and mediocre ones are how they handle the fundamentals within the core frequencies. You definitely do need to talk about fundamentals because that is most of what you hear. Again, that's my point- a very basic concept which no one seems able to wrap their heads around.

 

[chewy4]

Quote:

Except of course for church organs, which have fundamentals beyond the abiity of many very good headphones to reproduce accurately.
By the way, the BIG difference between good headphones and mediocre ones are how they handle the fundamentals within the core frequencies. You definitely do need to talk about fundamentals because that is most of what you hear. Again, that's my point- a very basic concept which no one seems able to wrap their heads around.

I'm pretty sure there aren't any remotely decent headphones that drop the fundamental frequencies completely.
 
I didn't mean that the fundamental frequencies are easy to master and should be an afterthought. Just that in most high-ish end headphones the basics of a good sound are done well, and the differences lie in the nuances and coloration.
 
I don't think there's a single soul here who disagreed that the last octave is the least important out of all the audible octaves. Just that if you're shooting for a high-end audio system it is essential.

 

[stv014]

There are many (especially closed) headphones with problems in the 1 to 5 kHz range, which is what human hearing is most sensitive to. Although this range is somewhat higher than (but overlaps with) fundamental frequencies.