How High Can You Hear?

[Moosbrugger]

An on-line hearing test from

. I don't know how accurate it is, and I'm sure there are others out there.

I couldn't hear above 12,000 hz. I feel old.

[AlainGr]

It's exactly the same for me (12khz is the max I can hear)... Yet I can feel the pain when my niece is screaming She really has a powerful and clear voice !

[mayhem13]

An on-line hearing test from

. I don't know how accurate it is, and I'm sure there are others out there.

I couldn't hear above 12,000 hz. I feel old.

 

That's exactly what makes me question so many of the subjective reports on forums. I check mine periodically and I'm struggling at 15khz. I think a lot of what drives many older audiophiles is to recapture in listening from an earlier time. Apparently our memories don't suffer the same fate as our ears so those early listening experiences become reference....and nothing sounds quite like those when you're over 40! Simple test tones through phones are the easiest to hear....imagine my doubt when a fellow member in the same age group says he can identify a USB cable with complex music in a casual listening environment with average noise.

[mav52]

That's exactly what makes me question so many of the subjective reports on forums. I check mine periodically and I'm struggling at 15khz. I think a lot of what drives many older audiophiles is to recapture in listening from an earlier time. Apparently our memories don't suffer the same fate as our ears so those early listening experiences become reference....and nothing sounds quite like those when you're over 40! Simple test tones through phones are the easiest to hear....imagine my doubt when a fellow member in the same age group says he can identify a USB cable with complex music in a casual listening environment with average noise.

 

Ears and eyes, the first things to go as you age.... Darn it

[firedog]

That's exactly what makes me question so many of the subjective reports on forums. I check mine periodically and I'm struggling at 15khz. I think a lot of what drives many older audiophiles is to recapture in listening from an earlier time. Apparently our memories don't suffer the same fate as our ears so those early listening experiences become reference....and nothing sounds quite like those when you're over 40! Simple test tones through phones are the easiest to hear....imagine my doubt when a fellow member in the same age group says he can identify a USB cable with complex music in a casual listening environment with average noise.

 

But inability to hear high frequency tones in a test does not mean you can't discern all sorts of detail and subtlety in music. Music is much more complex, has all sorts of overtones, etc. In addition, a lot of what audiophile "hear" is the result of trained listening. Even someone with younger ears and better hearing in theory won't hear some of what a trained listener hears - until he also trains his/her hearing.

 

BTW, I'm 56 and my hearing only gives out somewhere between 15 and 16K.

[NOMBEDES]

Ears and eyes, the first things to go as you age.... Darn it

 

 

If your are LUCKY, eyes and ears!

[wgscott]

I can hear a 17 kHz mosquito next to my ear, and 16 kHz faintly in a hearing test. I can hear buzzing of light bulbs and ballasts, and the whine of a TV left on with no programming,the song of the blackburnian warbler, but I cannot hear almost any of the night and day differences most audiophiles take as a starting premise for comparisons.

[wgscott]

Even someone with younger ears and better hearing in theory won't hear some of what a trained listener hears - until he also trains his/her hearing.

 

How does this differ from expectation bias?

[gmgraves]

An on-line hearing test from

. I don't know how accurate it is, and I'm sure there are others out there.

I couldn't hear above 12,000 hz. I feel old.

 

I recently took an audiometry test. I can barely hear 13, 200 Hz. Getting old is a bitch. But audio is not about listening to TV raster (15, 750 Hz), it's about music. I can still enjoy music as much as I ever did and can still tell the difference between highs that are silky smooth with low distortion and highs that are rough, or sandpaper-like, or dull. Be happy you don't have any hearing problems that would impinge on your perceived listening pleasure. I've an audiophile friend who is two years younger than I am and he has just had to have two hearing aids fitted. I don't have to tell you how devastating that is to one who loves the sound of music. These things cost him a small fortune and he says that they have the effect of reducing the act of listening to music to the experience of music-on-hold over the telephone. Ghastly!

[wgscott]

He simply needs to spend more money on stereo components and higher-quality interconnects.

[Jud]

In addition, a lot of what audiophile "hear" is the result of trained listening. Even someone with younger ears and better hearing in theory won't hear some of what a trained listener hears - until he also trains his/her hearing.

 

 

I've always wondered about that, and correspondingly have always thought that if something is really audible and appreciable pretty much anyone with reasonable hearing should be able to appreciate it. It's a corollary of something I frequently refer to as "No one ever came out of a Pavarotti concert raving about the bass, transients, and soundstage." The best sound to me means closest to real, and great music I've experienced live has almost none of the qualities I see overused as descriptions in equipment reviews. You'll also notice that it doesn't seem to take a tremendous amount of training for someone to profoundly enjoy live music - though I grant knowing something about technique can add to your admiration for a performer (or for that matter detract from it, in the case of something that sounds more difficult to play than it actually turns out to be).

[alfe]

I've always wondered about that, and correspondingly have always thought that if something is really audible and appreciable pretty much anyone with reasonable hearing should be able to appreciate it. It's a corollary of something I frequently refer to as "No one ever came out of a Pavarotti concert raving about the bass, transients, and soundstage." The best sound to me means closest to real, and great music I've experienced live has almost none of the qualities I see overused as descriptions in equipment reviews. You'll also notice that it doesn't seem to take a tremendous amount of training for someone to profoundly enjoy live music - though I grant knowing something about technique can add to your admiration for a performer (or for that matter detract from it, in the case of something that sounds more difficult to play than it actually turns out to be).

 

Hi Jud,

Excuse my english but you mean that Pavarotti hasn't a DSD voice? ¨-)

[fallington]

I recently took an audiometry test. I can barely hear 13, 200 Hz. Getting old is a bitch. But audio is not about listening to TV raster (15, 750 Hz), it's about music. I can still enjoy music as much as I ever did and can still tell the difference between highs that are silky smooth with low distortion and highs that are rough, or sandpaper-like, or dull. Be happy you don't have any hearing problems that would impinge on your perceived listening pleasure. I've an audiophile friend who is two years younger than I am and he has just had to have two hearing aids fitted. I don't have to tell you how devastating that is to one who loves the sound of music. These things cost him a small fortune and he says that they have the effect of reducing the act of listening to music to the experience of music-on-hold over the telephone. Ghastly!

 

My wife's voice (as well as a lot of female voices) fall within the frequency of sound I have difficulty hearing. Sometimes this isn't a bad thing but it caused enough problems at home and professionally that I ended up getting fitted for hearing aids. I was worried they would degrade my listening experience as described above. I worked with my audiologist tuning the aids over several weeks and was pleasantly surprised that they actually enhanced my listening experience for most music. My system, however, is fairly modest and not as revealing as some members' systems. I would be interested in listening to a nice system to compare the sound with and without the aids.

[firedog]

How does this differ from expectation bias?

 

Nothing at all to do with expectation bias. When you learn about art and painting, you notice details in artwork you didn't see before, even though they were always there. You've trained your brain to notice detail that it didn't consciously register before. The same is true in almost any field in some way.

 

Hunters notice details in the field others don't, farmers the same. It's because they are trained to notice details that other people "see", but don't notice.

 

Nothing different about listening to music, whether live or reproduced. When you have more knowledge you "hear" things that others don't. When you've been told what "boomy" bass is, or learned what the decay of a cymbal sounds like, you start to notice it, whereas before you might not have.

 

I can hear the difference between an 128k mp3 and Redbook. I have acquantainces who've said they sound the same. Yet when I point out the differences to them and play a few examples they start to notice the differnces - consistently and under blind conditions. The differences were always there, but until they were told what to listen for, they didn't notice them. It's not imaginary, it's just that they learned to notice the differences they didn't hear before.

 

So yes, listening is a learned, trained skill. Not the same as hearing, the physiological phenomenon.

[mayhem13]

But inability to hear high frequency tones in a test does not mean you can't discern all sorts of detail and subtlety in music. Music is much more complex, has all sorts of overtones, etc. In addition, a lot of what audiophile "hear" is the result of trained listening. Even someone with younger ears and better hearing in theory won't hear some of what a trained listener hears - until he also trains his/her hearing.

 

BTW, I'm 56 and my hearing only gives out somewhere between 15 and 16K.

 

Well....not an audiophile but practically trained through working in the industry for 20+ years and can't say that I agree with your summation at all...........more a convenient hypothesis that helps audiophiles sleep better at night.

[Snowmonkey]

It's a common experience that older cardiologists can hear heart murmurs that are inaudible to (young) medical trainees, until those trainees gain experience.

[Daudio]

I've... always thought that if something is really audible and appreciable pretty much anyone with reasonable hearing should be able to appreciate it.

 

Jud,

 

Then, I suppose, you should be able to tell the difference between Stradivarius and a Guarneri violins without any training ? Tune a piano ? Balance an orchestra in performance ?

 

I don't think anyone is born with the ability to 'hear' music playback equipment. I believe it has to be learned through practice and exposure. Unfortunately I don't know of any classes in it down at the local community college

[esldude]

Good question. I have about 12 khz in one ear, and 14.5 khz in the other. But my long audiophile experience allows me to fully compensate with no problems hearing such things as the resultant aberrations of distant ethernet cable emissions.

[Jud]

Hi Jud,

Excuse my english but you mean that Pavarotti hasn't a DSD voice? ¨-)

 

DSD wishes it had Pavarotti's voice.

[Snowmonkey]

Hi Jud,

Excuse my english but you mean that Pavarotti hasn't a DSD voice? ¨-)

Pavarotti was one of those rare singers who had perfect pitch, so he could sing an exact note without reference to any previous note, rather like PCM. Most singers can only judge the pitch of the note they are singing relative to the pitch of the note they sang (or heard) previously, which is closer to how DSD works.

[Jud]

Jud,

 

Then, I suppose, you should be able to tell the difference between Stradivarius and a Guarneri violins without any training ? Tune a piano ? Balance an orchestra in performance ?

 

I don't think anyone is born with the ability to 'hear' music playback equipment. I believe it has to be learned through practice and exposure. Unfortunately I don't know of any classes in it down at the local community college

 

I can't tune a piano, but I can tuna fish! [Rimshot]

 

Thank you, I'll be here all week....

 

OK, back to the subject at hand -

 

No to the latter two. I wonder, though, whether most folks would be able to hear and appreciate differences between a recording of a balanced orchestra sound and a sound that for whatever reason (mic-ing, conducting, etc.) is not balanced. Maybe. And I'm reasonably sure they'd be able to tell the difference between a recording of an out-of-tune piano and one that was in tune.

 

Regarding the first, lots of interesting variables there. I wonder, for example, whether the variability in tone among Stradivarius violins is not greater than the average variation between a Stradivarius and a Guarneri. (This often occurs in such comparisons. For example, the variability in height among women is far greater than the average height difference between a man and a woman.) So it would certainly impact the ability to tell one from the other if two from the same builder can sound more different from each other than two from the two different builders. Then of course there is the contribution of the player - two players, each with a Strad, might certainly sound more different than the same player with a Strad and a Guarneri. So (setting aside recordings done purely for curiosity's sake by a single player with instruments from each of the two makers) it would certainly add difficulty to the task if two different players as well as two different instruments were involved. And then of course we also have to deal with such things as whether someone who has training to the extent of having played both can translate what he hears next to his ear (and adding bone conduction) to what he hears through mics and an audio system. So perhaps not exactly an easy task for anyone.

 

I can tell you that when I first went to audition my speakers and started talking to the dealer about speaker cables, my wife (then girlfriend) scoffed at the idea of actually spending money on such foolishness. I already had Kimber Kables. So the dealer switched between those and the Audioquest I was looking at, and my wife had the stereo(heh)typical jaw-dropping experience. It was one reason I'd insisted she come along - I didn't want any expectation bias I might have from reading reviews, etc., to enter into my decision. I wanted someone who'd been exposed to no marketing and who was actually predisposed against my spending money on this stuff to listen.

 

I think this sort of independent input can be extremely valuable, and I try to run blind tests on my wife on the rare occasions she'll agree to them.

[alfe]

Pavarotti was one of those rare singers who had perfect pitch, so he could sing an exact note without reference to any previous note, rather like PCM. Most singers can only judge the pitch of the note they are singing relative to the pitch of the note they sang (or heard) previously, which is closer to how DSD works.

 

Ok than DSD will fit more RAP music ¨-)

[beetlemania]

Interesting. My 51 y.o. ears can hear the 15k cycle tone but not the 16k. When I do a glide tone on my home system, I don't seem to be able to hear passed ~12k. Go figure

[mbain]

Your friend must suffer from a very significant hearing loss...or else he needs to spend more time with his audiologist.

 

Mark

[esldude]

Seeing so many with less than 20khz hearing, I am thinking, at least in the USA, we need the Hearing Fairness Act. All reproduced/recorded music will by law have a -3db point at 8 khz and roll off first order above that. It simply isn't fair that some people get to hear recorded music better than others simply due to age. As a matter of fairness, and public benefit it simply makes sense.