14 June 2006

Annoy your neighbour's dogs. And children too...

At this very moment in time, I've got a really wayang headache from listening to some ultra high-pitched sine wave audio samples. Thanks to this guy, of course.

Apparently, a female student in some other country heard about how some adults (read: old farts) can't hear audio frequencies at 16KHz and above. This student then decided to use a 16KHz sine wave audio sample as a ring tone, which is brilliant since she'd be able to hear her phone ring during lectures while her teachers won't.

Sure enough, Kit tried playing this 16KHz ring tone in front of all of us and most of the 'more experienced' people in the office couldn't hear it - even though it irritated the shit out of us younger people.

The human ear is supposedly able to hear frequencies between 20Hz (ultra low-pitch bass) and 20KHz (ultra high-pitch treble). This is also why audio CDs have a sampling rate of 44.1KHz, which results in a maximum attainable frequency of about 22KHz - just a bit higher than what humans can hear.

And so, we tried listening to various audio samples at the office to check our individual cut-off points at this website.



Apparently, I'm able to hear stuff up to 18KHz. The other guys in the office could only hear up to 17KHz. So I guess that means I win... *yay!*

Try it out and tell me your frequency cut-off points! Do it now!!!



****

As a side note, you could burn an 18KHz or 19KHz audio sample onto a CD, drive up to a kindergarten and play it at full blast on your car stereo with the windows down. Imagine the extremely baffled look on the teachers' faces as their students go completely bonkers. *Insert evil laughter!!!*

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

hmm.. It seems that I also can hear up to 18kHz ++.

The Wanderer said...

me too me too.

Anonymous said...

:) too bad, your evil plan is not going to work.

The attenuation of sound wave at high frequency is very high, you won't be able to transmit high frequency sound very far. In addition, the human ear is only sensitive to audio range between 500Hz and 8kHz. You need to put in much much more energy and very good quality actuator(i.e. speaker) to hit the threshhold of pain at such a big distance.

Chris Chong said...

Drat...

I would've gotten away if it weren't for you pesky little anonymous posters.

Anonymous said...

hahaha....anonymous sounds awfully a lot like ye chow.....

Anonymous said...

18khz
My sister can hear 20khz VERY loud. I'm getting old.

Elaine

Zelkats said...

muahahahahahaaa!!! I can't hear the noise at 25KHz!! Well, that's after visiting the doctor to clear the ear wax from my ears