Viridian...I have long believed that our sense of hearing includes a "waveform steepness" factor quite independent of frequency response. I came up with this idea a couple of decades ago when I found out that I could hear the introduction/removal of a low pass filter at a frequency well above the frequency at which I became stone-deaf to a sine wave (the usual test signal). This would also explain why a supertweeter operating above 20KHz makes an audible difference.
Wide bandwidth = necessary?
Hi folks, there is one paradigm that bothers me a bit: many experts and audiophiles are stating that Red Book technology is outdated because of it's bandwidth limited function. I've read the human ear is capable of perception of frequencies beyond the normal human hearing, up to 40kHz. But this is only with live music! When listening to recorded music there is a restricted bandwidth because many microphones can only pick up frequencies up to 20kHz. So why the need for more and more bandwidth with regard to digital sound reproduction technology? What is not present in the recording can't be heard either, even with very wide bandwidth music reproduction gear.
What is also laughable is that many vinyl adepts say that phono playback gear can reproduce tones as high as 40kHz and that is one of the reasons phono playback sounds more "natural" than digital playback. This is a bit of a contradictio in terminis because most LP's are very band limited (30Hz to 16kHz is quite common). Your comments please.
Chris
What is also laughable is that many vinyl adepts say that phono playback gear can reproduce tones as high as 40kHz and that is one of the reasons phono playback sounds more "natural" than digital playback. This is a bit of a contradictio in terminis because most LP's are very band limited (30Hz to 16kHz is quite common). Your comments please.
Chris
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Eldartford: that is an interesting phenomenon. Do you think we humans can appreciate more of the sound if the gear is capable of reproducing frequencies above 20kHz even if the recording itself doesn't contain any frequency above 16kHz? With other words: would the music sound more "natural"? If that is the case, then I have to have this super tweeter also --> it will superficially create naturalness (sounds like contradictio in terminis). Chris |
The other way that these high frequencies can change the perceived sound is through waveform theory where constructive and destructive interferance among waveforms can cause beats that fall down into the audible range. IE a 22K and a 23K signal can create a difference signal at 1K, etc. Note that this would be happening in the listening room and is not sound that is on the recording itself, so must be considered to be distortion. No doubt, this is also part of the phenomena. |
I found out that I could hear the introduction/removal of a low pass filter at a frequency well above the frequency at which I became stone-deaf to a sine wave (the usual test signal). That is quite normal from many sharp low pass or brick wall filters which will introduce a ripple on what passes through - you can indeed hear the ripple. Essentially any box function applied to a signal will introduce ripple within the band. There are phase effects to. You don't have to resort to the idea that we can hear ultrasonics (like a bat) to believe that a filter can be audible. Here is an example of a chebyshev filter |
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