What frequencies can you hear?

Rinkleton

Rinkleton

Member
There is this house nearby that has some kind of device that emits a very high frequency noise. I think it's to keep deer away. I can hear it and every time I walk by it gives me a splitting headache. My girlfriend can't hear it at all. I've heard that as people get older, they can no longer hear high frequencies. I'm curious how much that affects audio engineers. There are a lot of threads about fizziness and harshness. I'm wondering if something that sounds harsh to someone (lets say a younger person), might sound smoother to someone else?

When I first started mixing stuff, I always took people's advice which was "just trust your ears" as opposed to eq-ing something based on how the curve looks, for example. After revisiting those mixes and comparing them to what I wanted them to sound like, they are way too bass heavy and have way too little top end. So I think that advice is total BS. In my opinion, mixing is more of a science than an art.

One day I isolated the highest frequencies I could. Man, it was painful to listen to. Anyone else ever do that?
 
IMO, a bass-heavy mix isn't a matter of hearing issues. It's a matter of not knowing your monitors and lack of reference tracks. Assuming your monitors have adequate low end response, I bet you'd hear the bass-heaviness in a second if you compared to a reference track.

In answer to your question, my hearing rolls off somewhere around 14 KHz.
 
I can hear up to 16.5khz
My sister can hear nearly 18khz. Women tend to hear higher frequencies better apparently.
I did this on a hearing test on iPad using headphones.
My mum is def with probably 10% hearing so it's always been quite interesting for me to try and figure out what her world sounds like.
 
Last time I did a professional test, 3 years ago, I had "extraordinary" ability to hear lows and identify the correct note for them, down to about 17Hz. My highs were pretty typical, rolling off near 17kHz (I forget the exact figure, it was just under 17kHz). At the same time, I have tinnitus, which can suck some times, usually just when I'm laying down to sleep in a very quiet place.
 
I can't trust my ears simply because outside in an evening when its warm I can hear bats as they zip around the house/garden... not really sure that's normal?
 
aleclee said:
IMO, a bass-heavy mix isn't a matter of hearing issues. It's a matter of not knowing your monitors and lack of reference tracks. Assuming your monitors have adequate low end response, I bet you'd hear the bass-heaviness in a second if you compared to a reference track.

In answer to your question, my hearing rolls off somewhere around 14 KHz.
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I think that kind of speaks to my point. Using a reference track isn't really trusting your ears... it's trusting someone else's.

selta said:
Last time I did a professional test, 3 years ago, I had "extraordinary" ability to hear lows and identify the correct note for them, down to about 17Hz. My highs were pretty typical, rolling off near 17kHz (I forget the exact figure, it was just under 17kHz). At the same time, I have tinnitus, which can suck some times, usually just when I'm laying down to sleep in a very quiet place.
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Oh man I have tinnitus too. Sooo annoying. This place I used to work had a ultra quiet sound chamber. I went in it and it made me feel queasy.
 
I have had some kinda gooey crap in my right ear for 18 months. It's fine until I wake in the morning and obviously my body heat has made it gooey.mas soon as I get up it clears but I do have a very very low level ringing in my right ear due to this. Not noticeable at all unless it's dead silent but still it's one of my biggest fears. Some people have it real bad.
 
I've eating fish for the past few months, and now I'm having some crustachian tube issues...

...My ears are not as good as when I was very young, that's for sure. One ear has some scarring from a little accident, and possibly slightly less perception (annoying). That's why I am careful to wear protection in loud clubs and stuff - I tend to be more concerned with loud treble frequencies, so that's when I stuff napkins in there - seems to work. I do think the 17K stuff may be audible to me, but if so its very, very slight. I start rolling off at 13K and apparently still have some strong perception at 14.5. Above that its a sense, but faint.

I think its a bit hard to mix purely on the basis of hearing. When I try to find a place for lead guitar in a mix of keyboards, I rely on the response curves on the graph, remove some from the synths where I want the guitar to shine, and so forth. That's a hard trick by ear.
 
Haven't had tests done or anything but my parents used to try using this dog whistle type thing and I was the only one in the house that could hear it haha, in regards to the comment about hearing bats flying I hear em too!
 
I'm 50 now.......

So what if you're trying to do this "music thing" and you are half deaf?....like me....Both my ears drop off the scale starting about about 1000Hz when it is charted by an audiologist it looks like about a 60 degree angle on the drop from 1000Hz to 8000Hz. Basically can't hear anything above 2000Hz without help. I wear stereo hearing aids that boost the highs. They have 3 settings for different environments such as noisy restaurants and when it's quieter at home. Fairly expensive at $5,500 a pair.

I'm going to "tone match" my wife and get doctor to drop off that frequency totally...LOL

But some of the things I see and TRY to hear you guys talking about on here.....no way I hear the difference. I've been this way since I was about 18. It was Ted Nugent's fault. I stood against the stage back in the 70's right in front of Ted's wall of Fenders for an entire concert. Also about that time I stood right in front of Richie Blackmore (Rainbow at the time). Ears rang for days after those and it's been all down hill since. A little of it is genetic I believe as my dad had bad hearing (without all the music).

One thing I could NEVER be is an audio engineer. Just can't hear that stuff. I might could mix some of this stupid hip-hop. I can hear bass fine.

But let me tell you.....without the hearing aids the world is a pretty nice serene place. No squeaks...no squeals.....no rattles.....smoke detectors can off right over my head and it doesn't bother me a bit.....

But you guys that can hear well......PROTECT IT.......you can't get it back once it's gone......
 
Hearing isn't a black or white, yes or no, type of deal. There is a specific threshold for each ear, at each frequency tested. For example, someone might be able to hear 2000 Hz at a threshold of 20 dB, but then with a somewhat common sloping high frequency loss, they may need a level of 40 dB at 4000 Hz, and maybe 60 dB at 8000 Hz for a given ear. I'm not really sure how some of you are getting these "hearing limits" though, because as someone with a doctorate in Audiology I do plenty of hearing tests and we don't test inter-octave values such as 13,5000 Hz, much less routinely even test above 8000 Hz. In some cases of tinnitus or concerns over ototoxic drugs (such as chemo meds) we do high frequency but its not part of the complete hearing evaluation (IDC billing code 92557) and we don't ever tell someone that can or can't hear a specific frequency. The results are just conveyed with regards to shape and severity of the hearing loss.
 
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