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How’s your hearing?

GotNoRice

GotNoRice

[H]F Junkie
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Jul 11, 2001
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The range of human hearing is generally considered to be 20Hz to 20,000Hz. Starting at about age 20, human hearing begins to naturally decline by about 1Hz per day. For example, while a child may be able to hear sounds all the way up to 20,000Hz, someone in their mid 40’s may not be able to hear anything above 14,000Hz or so.

I have made a small torrent of custom generated test tones ranging from 10,000Hz to 20,000Hz, in 500Hz increments starting at 13,000Hz. I also included a test tone of 15700Hz, as that is the frequency of the high pitched whine that a NTSC CRT television gives off (a common indicator that you can use for easy comparison).

I’ve noticed that at lower bitrates, many compression algorithms (MP3, WMA, etc) tend to discard any information above 16000Hz or so, presumably due to the assumption that most people can’t hear it anyway so it is insignificant.

http://home.comcast.net/~gotnorice/Audiotest.torrent

As for me, my hearing rolls off pretty hard above 19,000. I can just barely hear 19,500, and I can’t hear 20,000 at all.

Also, try to keep the volume constant during the tests. If you have to turn the volume up in order to hear a tone, chances are you’re not actually hearing the tone at all, but rather you’re hearing this:

testtone.JPG


You can see that as the tone approaches the noise floor, it becomes less precise, sometimes including information up to 1000hz below the frequency of the actual tone. This should not be an issue, but if you are not hearing anything else, and you turn up the volume, this could easily become faintly audible, and would essentially defeat or at least diminish the accuracy of the results.
 
I'm pretty much like you in that I roll off after 19,000, barely hearing 20,000. This could also be a limitation of my tweeters.. Also, my room already has a nice loud hiss around.

I would bet that most of the guys here with multimedia speakers can't hear some of the higher frequencies.
 
what i didn't hear what you had to say?

I think having my stereo up all the time is ruining my hears :D
 
18000 is the last one that i can hear.. and know i am hearing it.. i can hear a when i switch between them though.. but really.. i can play 18500 for ever and it won't bother me..

i will try again with different headphones and speakers.. here are the speakers i am using now:
-Frequency Response- 43 Hz - 20 kHz
-Sensitivity- 90 dB @ 1 watt, 1 meter
-Recommended Amplifier
Power- 10-150 watts per chann.
-Driver Complement- 6"
 poly/graphite woofer, 3/4" poly dome tweeter
-Crossover- 3.5 kHz
-Impedance- 8 Ohms

they should hit them just fine with the 3/4 poly domes.. i will try my titanium dome jbls that i don't like becasue they are too damn bright at the top..

so either i can't hear it... or i figured out how to tune out high pitched shit because of floursecent lighting... except i think i hear it now even though i am playing nothing... those lower ones, especially 13000-15000 got my ears ringing..

anyone want to guess what flourescent lighting's frequency is? i am guessing it is low actually. 7k or so...
 
Can't hear past 15.5, and I'm only 23...owch. I think I'll blame my AV710...:D
 
OK, this is weird, on my HTPC I can hear 20KHz (can hear everything from 15 to 20) - but it sounds kinda lower than 16KHz. And my boyfriend can hear it too, and he's 31. ?!

What's going on here? My speakers aren't playing it properly? Or is that correct, and it's my headphone setup that sucks? /me = confused

(my headphone setup is AV710 high quality -> twinstarr black amp -> hf-1 - I tried without the amp and I can't hear the high tones that way either, so the amp is not the problem. speaker setup is AV710 optical out -> Pioneer 815S receiver -> Paradigm mini monitor speakers.)
 
AdamW said:
OK, this is weird, on my HTPC I can hear 20KHz (can hear everything from 15 to 20) - but it sounds kinda lower than 16KHz. And my boyfriend can hear it too, and he's 31. ?!

What's going on here? My speakers aren't playing it properly? Or is that correct, and it's my headphone setup that sucks? /me = confused

(my headphone setup is AV710 high quality -> twinstarr black amp -> hf-1 - I tried without the amp and I can't hear the high tones that way either, so the amp is not the problem. speaker setup is AV710 optical out -> Pioneer 815S receiver -> Paradigm mini monitor speakers.)
Click to expand...
the first thing that popped into my head was BOSE.. but then i read what your equip is..
 
will try it - but i assume hi as when i walk into a House, - i can tell if a TV is on or not - and i have walked into some HUGE houses i often hate having such good hearing cause i hear thing and people think i am crazy!

<-- is 26 years old.

Any chance you can put this in somethign other then a torrent - since i dont use them dont want to have to install another app to try this out.
 
sweet I can hear all of them but I am only 16 1/2 year old hehe was using KSC-75's BTW
 
Can you link this in a normal audio format, WAVE, or something? I don't want to install another program just to retrieve this file.
 
MrGuvernment said:
will try it - but i assume hi as when i walk into a House, - i can tell if a TV is on or not - and i have walked into some HUGE houses i often hate having such good hearing cause i hear thing and people think i am crazy!

<-- is 26 years old.

Any chance you can put this in somethign other then a torrent - since i dont use them dont want to have to install another app to try this out.
Click to expand...

Haha, I know the feeling.. Until you just said it I thought I was insane about that little ringing TV sound.
 
<----- 18, and I go shooting ALOT, and the last one I could hear was 18,500. I was sitting 3 feet away from my speakers, which are HT running through a reciever. If I moved a little closer I coudl hear 19000 and 19500. If I was about a foot away I could hear 20000.

Not bad if I might say so....
 
I can hear a 20000 tone generated by my EMU PatchMix. I have always done well on audio tests as a kid and such. Downloading this program now

When I was a kid I would walk into rooms full of monitors and TVs and such and be like "What is that noise?" and everyone would say "What noise?"
 
For the people who can hear the tones above 18KHz, do they actually sound like you'd expect them to? As I say I can hear them, but they don't follow the same pattern as you hear going from 15KHz to 18KHz - in that range it just sounds the same but...higher, as you'd expect, but from 18KHz to 20KHz sounds really weird on my speakers.
 
MrGuvernment said:
will try it - but i assume hi as when i walk into a House, - i can tell if a TV is on or not - and i have walked into some HUGE houses i often hate having such good hearing cause i hear thing and people think i am crazy!

<-- is 26 years old.

Any chance you can put this in somethign other then a torrent - since i dont use them dont want to have to install another app to try this out.
Click to expand...
Yes, please put something other than a torrent, i dont use it either and i would really like to try this out. Thanks.
 
This test proves nothing.

First everyone is using different speaker setups and different audio cards. Second, you are making it a competition. This doesn't say jack about anyones ability to hear sound, and people are going to tell themselves they can hear higher and post it. The only way to accurately gauge your ability to hear properly is to see a doctor and get tested in their soundroom.

The soundcards and headphones we are using screw up the output data so much it makes the test completely invalid, not to mention we aren't even running a set volume!
 
I can hear up to 19500 but 20000 is a no go for these, odd because when I set my EMU to a constant 20,000 hz tone I can hear it clearly
 
Boltaction said:
>>>>>
The only way to accurately gauge your ability to hear properly is to see a doctor and get tested in their soundroom.
>>>>>
Click to expand...
So true. With that said I have my hearing tested at Johns Hopkins (long story) fairly often and it indeed sux. :(
 
only 21 years of age, and can only hear 17000 and below. I think this is due to my shitty PC speakers though. I can hear when electronics and stuff are on when i enter rooms. So i am leaning towards half assed speakers being my downfall. I agree only a doc can determine you hearing range accuretly.
 
Well lets just put it this way, after the hearing test the military hearing specialist gave me, they still wanted me. :D And trust me, those Jet Engines are really loud!!!! we have to wear two types of hearing barriers to protect from the sharp whistles and tutes that the Engines put out, not to mention some of the power tools we use!
 
Boltaction said:
This test proves nothing.

First everyone is using different speaker setups and different audio cards. Second, you are making it a competition. This doesn't say jack about anyones ability to hear sound, and people are going to tell themselves they can hear higher and post it. The only way to accurately gauge your ability to hear properly is to see a doctor and get tested in their soundroom.

The soundcards and headphones we are using screw up the output data so much it makes the test completely invalid, not to mention we aren't even running a set volume!
Click to expand...

First of all, I didn’t make the thread to prove anything, and it doesn’t matter anyway since this is more age dependent than anything else. It’s just something I was messing around with and decided to make a thread about. It can be informative in the sense that if you can hear the higher frequencies on your setup, then it is food for thought the next time you get a compressed audio file that has all the frequencies above 16k cut off because “no one can hear them anyway”.

The hearing tests that doctors administer don’t typically test this frequency range. Hearing loss due to damage caused by excessive loud noise tends to first damage your hearing at about 3Khz and spreads up and down the frequency range as the condition worsens. This is in contrast to the natural and gradual loss of high frequency sound perception as we age, which is what this thread is about. Doctor’s tests typically top out at 8Khz.

Finally, I’m not sure what you are trying to say in the sense that soundcards and headphones “screw up” the sound. At worst, low quality equipment it might simply not be able to reproduce the higher frequencies. But if it does, you can be reasonably sure that a 16Khz tone is in fact playing at 16Khz, as opposed to 17 or 15. If it isn’t playing at the correct frequency, then that would mean that your card is altering the pitch of the audio it reproduces (think like what happens when you slow down a record), which would be a pretty serious flaw.

MrGuvernment said:
Any chance you can put this in somethign other then a torrent - since i dont use them dont want to have to install another app to try this out.
Click to expand...
Empyrean said:
Can you link this in a normal audio format, WAVE, or something? I don't want to install another program just to retrieve this file.
Click to expand...
Hobbit89 said:
Yes, please put something other than a torrent, i dont use it either and i would really like to try this out. Thanks.
Click to expand...

I made a torrent because it is convenient and I can manage the bandwidth usage (limit the upload when I play an online game so that it doesn’t affect my ping as much, etc). It also helps when multiple people download a file at the same time. As for the audio format, these are WMA lossless files encoded at 16-bit, 48Khz. I didn’t use WAVE because wave is uncompressed and would have doubled the size of the files. I didn’t use something like MP3 because I didn’t want unknown lossy compression characteristics to play a factor in the tests. WMA lossless (compressed with no loss of information) seemed to be the best compromise. As far as needing a special program to play them, any computer with windows media player will be able to play them and failing that, WMA is still probably the most widely supported format next to MP3.

I used Cool Edit Pro to make these test tones, however if you would rather not download a torrent you can download a freeware program called “Audacity” that is capable of generating test tones. It is also open source and works on Mac as well as Linux.
 
Damn... mine rolls off pretty hard after 14Khz... I can sort of hear 14.5, 15 if I listen really really hard, but nothing at all over that.

Too many years standing right in front of drumlines I think...
 
i cant hear past like the 3rd one, haha

hopefully it's my speakers and i'm not deaf

edit: turned up the speakers and i can hear all of them. WHEW!
 
I made a torrent because it is convenient and I can manage the bandwidth usage (limit the upload when I play an online game so that it doesn’t affect my ping as much, etc). It also helps when multiple people download a file at the same time.
Click to expand...

I was trying to indicate that the WMA, in this case, could be uploaded to a webserver of some sort, from which it could be downloaded without impacting your bandwidth. I know http://www.supload.com/free-audio-hosting will allow files up to 5MB, I'm guessing your file is larger being lossless.

Anyway, no 'torrent' for me, so I guess I'm out. :cool:
 
I think how clean and clear your ears are has a big impact on what your actual range of hearing is. I just had my left ear flushed out at the doctors office the other day and theres a huge difference between what my left ear was picking up and what my right ear was.
 
GotNoRice said:
I made a torrent because it is convenient and I can manage the bandwidth usage (limit the upload when I play an online game so that it doesn&#8217;t affect my ping as much, etc). It also helps when multiple people download a file at the same time. As for the audio format, these are WMA lossless files encoded at 16-bit, 48Khz. I didn&#8217;t use WAVE because wave is uncompressed and would have doubled the size of the files. I didn&#8217;t use something like MP3 because I didn&#8217;t want unknown lossy compression characteristics to play a factor in the tests. WMA lossless (compressed with no loss of information) seemed to be the best compromise. As far as needing a special program to play them, any computer with windows media player will be able to play them and failing that, WMA is still probably the most widely supported format next to MP3.

I used Cool Edit Pro to make these test tones, however if you would rather not download a torrent you can download a freeware program called &#8220;Audacity&#8221; that is capable of generating test tones. It is also open source and works on Mac as well as Linux.
Click to expand...


How large is the file - i could possibly host it off a server no problems.
 
Thank you so much for hosting those, and btw, i was able to hear ALL of them, and i might be able to hear 20500 too, but idk, thanks again.
 
Hmmm...having a hard time at over 17500.

But, when I looked at the signals in a wave editor, they look like they are modulated signals, not a solid sine wave.

Any reason why?
 
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