Some of my co-workers were chatting at lunch yesterday about the highest audible frequencies that can be heard by people of various ages. Apparently, teens these days are programming their cell phones to use high frequency ring tones while in class. The frequencies are so high that adults can’t hear them, only teens can. One of my co-workers located a web site that has links to sounds at various frequencies. What’s the highest frequency you can hear? I got up to 18k using my headphones, but only 17k on my speakers. Anything higher than that makes me physically uncomfortable even though I can’t hear anything.
Comments
3 responses to “Audible frequencies and cell phones”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist_frequency
Using specialized hardware, you can go higher. You should in theory only be able to achieve 22.5khz… and even still, if you try for 22.4khz, you’ll get audible artifacts, or high-frequency resonance, and slightly lower amplitude being output.
PS, the 44khz that computer WAVs are normally recorded at is arbitrary.
I’m guessing my cheap Altec Lansing desktop speakers won’t cut it at frequencies that high. 🙂