What Frequencies Can You Hear?
- June 13, 2006
- 8 comments
There’s been a news story going around about how some teenagers have started using a ringtone that can’t be heard by adults. The reason is because the frequency is too high for an older person to hear.
When we’re born, we can hear a range between 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz. As we get older, that range shrinks. So the kid who thought of using a high frequency ringtone is quite smart.
A musician from Minneapolis named Ochen Kaylan posted about this also, and put several samples of high frequency tones on his site. They range from 10,000 Hz to 25,000 Hz.
I can hear the tones up to 17,000 Hz easily. I can barely hear the 18,000 Hz tone at normal volume, but not 19,000 or higher. The 17,000 Hz tone instantly makes me cringe. I can’t listen to more than a second of it. It’s extremely annoying.
What frequency can you hear up to?
Missy
June 13, 2006
I read the story about this yesterday on AOL. I listened to the sample they gave and I immediately had to shut off the sound. It was so annoying! I went to the website you suggested and I found that at normal volume, I can easily hear the 18,000 but not the 19,000. Weird. I could only listen to short bursts though because it was driving me crazy!
Tim
Russ
June 14, 2006
Ashlee
What’s even more amazing is that the tiny speakers and budget-designed amplifiers inside cell phones can even reproduce sounds up that high!!