'Life Above 20kh' Research Paper, Harmonics (Overtones)


I happened across this study about sound frequencies beyond 20kh. Harmonics (I prefer the term Overtones)

http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~boyk/spectra/spectra.htm

Aside from the study’s purpose, skimming the text is fascinating, sends my/your inquisitive mind in many directions.

Think about your listening room when reading his extremely detailed measurements to ascertain/eliminate any external contributions to his measurements.

Check out the amount of sound energy beyond 20kh of various instruments, crash cymbals particularly revealing. Jangling keys also a surprise.

The comments about a Piano’s Altered Harmonics including the strings/sound board/floor, I found surprising. I’ve always known how difficult it is to record a piano, this must be part of the challenge.

Even though test subjects say they cannot hear the super tweeter, experimenters could measure that the super-frequencies were detected by ..... , awareness and the brain’s perception ability are different things
..................................

Overtones. ’Analog Gets the Overtones Rght’.

I’ve often said, after a whole lotta years, the only way I can begin to explain why I prefer analog, is ’Analog Gets the Overtones Rght’.

Reel to Reel, my noisiest format, is my most preferred source. LP favored over CD. Tubes over SS. Myself, and ANY/EVERYBODY listening here to comparisons over the years has the same preferences.

More reason to get our ears professionally cleaned!!

Elliott




elliottbnewcombjr
Dear @elliottbnewcombjr : For many years gentlemans as Prof. Johnson designer and manufacturer of Spectral electronics and owner of RR LP label talks of the importance that electronics must has linear very wide frequency range over 1Mhz as his electronics and my phonolinepreamps.

For years too I posted the importance of those harmonics and from that comes by insistence that the main subject the main parameter in the room/system MUSIC reproduction belongs to the bass range quality level performance because its harmonics modulates all the frequency hearing/listening frequency range.

Your link is a great one but you said :

"" I can begin to explain why I prefer analog, is ’Analog Gets the Overtones Rght’.

Reel to Reel, my noisiest format, is my most preferred source. LP favored over CD. Tubes over SS. Myself, and ANY/EVERYBODY listening here to comparisons over the years has the same preferences. ""

First already was discussed in deep in some Agon threads that our ears has an ADC, so your hear digital not analog: period.

You have a misunderstood of what you read in that link because harmonics are developed in the same way in any reproduction media and your preference for tubes means and confirm your misunderstood because there are several tube electronics that just don’t have a linear/flat frequency not  to 150khz and beyond but not even at 100khz. 


" ANY/EVERYBODY listening here to comparisons over the years has the same preferences. "

Well if you think that then all as you are way wrong: no matters what. You need to read your link again and again.

Btw, thank’s for the link.

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.


The late Allen Wright, who was a well known designer of superb preamplifiers and phono stages, wrote in his "Tube Preamp Cookbook" that he or a panel of listeners could hear changes he made to a circuit that affected response at 750kHz!  He also stressed the importance of wide bandwidth. His preamplifiers were typically hybrid designs, using  one transistor for gain in his phono stages.
raul

ok, we will remain happily wrong.

I agree, the volume level may not be flat, but I am thinking about the TIMING of the fundamentals and overtones of each and every instrument’s sound waves, to their individual fundamental, and all the surrounding notes; even overtones we are unaware of, being ’right’ or ’wrong’ to our brain’s perception. Capturing and re-generating fundamentals and overtones ’right’.

I’m no scientist, but I play Sgt. Peppers, CD, LP, R2R, and EVERYONE who hears them on my system pick LP over CD and R2R over LP. Next, I switch from McIntosh MC2250 SS to Tube Amp, EVERYONE picks tubes. Same thing with any content I have in all 3 formats. I can switch SS/Tubes without them knowing what’s what

It's not clarity, lack of noise, because LP is noisier than CD and Tape is noisier than LP.

It’s not ’warmth’, not ’happy distortion’, what is it? You have my best guess, imperceivably perceived timing.


Dear friends : For several years now I posted more than one time that human been can listen beyond 50khz and down beyond 20hz because we listen/hear through all our body: hair, bones, skin, etc, etc.

Even I posted that we have to have the experience to confirm it and for that we need to listen for at least one hour MUSIC tracks very well know for us seated in NAKED fashion ( only a boxer down there. ) at different controled SPL and inmediatly to that naked session listen same recordings with our normal clothes.
This experience is really a learning one and this link says that we really can listen with a more wide frequency range that we can imagine:

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e6ed/9ec45208be612a60411e3b527d65b22962d0.pdf

So, GO NAKED !!  . You have to try it.

R.
movement of instrument/mouth, air, microphone, cutting stylus, moving magnetic material on tape, captured/played back by movement

the ’timing’ is ’not quite right’ when you add the step of direct conversion of movement or conversion of captured movement to digits, numbers, good numbers, more numbers, a heck of a lotta more numbers, then read and convert those whole lotta numbers back to movement.

what the heck is loz rez, high rez, super high rez all about?
between two ears alone, on the exact same pulsed signal, the ears, as a pair, have a discernment level that goes well beyond 100khz, with regard to timing resolution, in stereoscopic placement of a ghost stereo signal. (it’s all reproduction and fakery)

and, in that, it must occur at the exact correct microsecond and at the exact correct level, with respect to the two signals coming out of the speaker pair.

to do so, requires an approximate 250khz plus sampling rate, and zero jitter of any kind. at a signal bit depth of at least 20 bits.

currently, we are incapable of recreating/building this. (Jitter)

never mind the sound of an orchestra in the same set-up.

there is additionally other fundamental problems with digital and BJT and Fet transistors.

V-Fet and SIT transistors are the only ones that are useful for human hearing discernment, when it comes to peak functions, and then there is tubes, which are also correct in the critical to human areas of signal reproduction. Analog tape and LP are also correct. Doug sax’s mastering system, BTW, was all tube. For this reason.

when digital was conceived and brought into the world, none of this was known or considered. Digital did some of the most critical (to human hearing) things wrong.... as it was, for the most part.. engineered--- not heard. Big mistake.
I found the 'hangover' effect interesting (3rd paragraph).

X. Significance of the results


Given the existence of musical-instrument energy above 20 kilohertz, it is natural to ask whether the energy matters to human perception or music recording. The common view is that energy above 20 kHz does not matter, but AES preprint 3207 by Oohashi et al. claims that reproduced sound above 26 kHz "induces activation of alpha-EEG (electroencephalogram) rhythms that persist in the absence of high frequency stimulation, and can affect perception of sound quality." [4]


      Oohashi and his colleagues recorded gamelan to a bandwidth of 60 kHz, and played back the recording to listeners through a speaker system with an extra tweeter for the range above 26 kHz. This tweeter was driven by its own amplifier, and the 26 kHz electronic crossover before the amplifier used steep filters. The experimenters found that the listeners' EEGs and their subjective ratings of the sound quality were affected by whether this "ultra-tweeter" was on or off, even though the listeners explicitly denied that the reproduced sound was affected by the ultra-tweeter, and also denied, when presented with the ultrasonics alone, that any sound at all was being played.

      From the fact that changes in subjects' EEGs "persist in the absence of high frequency stimulation," Oohashi and his colleagues infer that in audio comparisons, a substantial silent period is required between successive samples to avoid the second evaluation's being corrupted by "hangover" of reaction to the first.

...............................

me: what's a 'substantial time period'? silent for how long??? 

btw, I find many people can not even stop talking for the length of 1 song.

.......................................


      The preprint gives photos of EEG results for only three of sixteen subjects. I hope that more will be published.

In a paper published in Science, Lenhardt et al. report that "bone-conducted ultrasonic hearing has been found capable of supporting frequency discrimination and speech detection in normal, older hearing-impaired, and profoundly deaf human subjects." [5] They speculate that the saccule may be involved, this being "an otolithic organ that responds to acceleration and gravity and may be responsible for transduction of sound after destruction of the cochlea," and they further point out that the saccule has neural cross-connections with the cochlea. [6]

Even if we assume that air-conducted ultrasound does not affect direct perception of live sound, it might still affect us indirectly through interfering with the recording process. Every recording engineer knows that speech sibilants (Figure 10), jangling key rings (Figure 15), and muted trumpets (Figures 1 to 3) can expose problems in recording equipment. If the problems come from energy below 20 kHz, then the recording engineer simply needs better equipment. But if the problems prove to come from the energy beyond 20 kHz, then what's needed is either filtering, which is difficult to carry out without sonically harmful side effects; or wider bandwidth in the entire recording chain, including the storage medium; or a combination of the two.
      On the other hand, if the assumption of the previous paragraph be wrong — if it is determined that sound components beyond 20 kHz do matter to human musical perception and pleasure — then for highest fidelity, the option of filtering would have to be rejected, and recording chains and storage media of wider bandwidth would be needed.


Dear friends: Many years ago as many as my very old ADS L2030 speakers I learned about the importance of our clothes fabric kind.

In those times I looked and read it about a top speaker performer that was using long hair wool inside its boxes for speaker dampening.

My ADS came with fiber glass inside for that same " action "/dampening and I took the choice to modified it by changing all those, even toxic/cancer , glass fiber by long hair wool ( I think I used around 50kg on each one of these really big speakers. ) and that was a great move for the quality performance level of those speakers and I really mean it. As if the L2030 were new/different speakers.

From those times I left to use synthetic fabric clothes and only natural fabric/fibers as: wool, cotton, silk, linen, leather and the like.

You can make the test in this topic too: put you synthetic clothes and listen your system and then change those synthetic clothes by all natural fiber clothes and you must hear the differences for the better.

That’s whay too the furniture or seat couch/chair in your room/system must be made it only by natural fibers.

Returning to harmonics I have to say that the natural color that has the live MUSIC is " painted " by all developed harmonics, this is exactly what we are hearing in live events or in our room/system.
There is why the importance of the electronics/speakers characteristics.

R.
Dear @teo_audio : " which are also correct in the critical to human areas of signal reproduction "

there are not a true critical areas of signal reproduction. According that link and my posts here and elsewhere everything is critical from 16hz to over 150khz.
All harmonics modulates what we are " hearing " and puts the natural color MUSIC has.

"" requires an approximate 250khz plus sampling rate, and zero jitter of any kind. at a signal bit depth of at least 20 bits.

currently, we are incapable of recreating/building this. (Jitter) ""

Well today DACs comes with 32bits/384 characterisitcs, way higher than what we need.

Jitter?, LP is way worst than digital about because the cartridge stylus tip can’t follows the grooves modulations with continuity. The stylus tip is jumping at each great obstacle name it groove. This is worst that anything you imagine happens through digital.
Along that exist a tracking error in pivoted tonearms that impedes to pick up what is in the recording and where do you leave all the tonearm/cartridge/LP surface/TT developed resonances/distortions/noises added for that terrible inverse RIAA eq and all those additional gain stages in the electronics where the cartridge signal must pass thorugh ! ! !



All those is superior to today digital alternative?



""" Digital did some of the most critical (to human hearing) things wrong.. """

please tell me a computer or any digital instrument/device that does not use BITS. In which world are you living?

R.


Boring.
"This sounds better than that on MY system"
Sgt. Pepper's was created on a multidubbed 4 track. It SHOULD sound better mass produced on a limited analog media.
BFD
Blah blah honk honk.
I like a lot of music more than other.
You probably don't agree.
There is NO I'm right or you are wrong.
I think  rauliruegas1's point  is can't be overstated - that we don't just hear music, we experience it, and that means through all the senses and faculties within the human mechanism.

Science is a long long way from being able to measure all the subtle faculties in play, so focusing solely on the brain's processing of a single transport will remain incomplete.

First of all this paper proves absolutely nothing. It brings up some interesting avenues for research which is about it. One tenet od scientific research is that the results have to be reproducible. No body has reproduced anything.
Music is absolutely not just heard but experienced. Anybody with good subwoofers knows that. Then there are the visual aspects. In spite of the sound being butte awful in many live venues the thrill of seeing a live performance frequently (but not always) overcomes that problem. Sitting at home staring at loudspeakers distorts the sound stage. Close your eyes and instrument size and location becomes better defined. Playback of a good concert video (with a big screen between the speakers takes it up another notch.
As for ultrasonics ? Very few speakers do much above 20 kHz. If they do it is so focused that you would have to be directly in front of and at the level of all the tweeters to be exposed to it. Anybody experienced in reading EEGs will tell you that it is absolutely impossible to draw a conclusion like this from these tracings. There are types of brain imaging that would be more likely to tell you something. We know for instance that people blind from a young age transfer their visual cortex to sound interpretation instead. Stevie Wonder is such an example. 
Any of the examples above of people preferring one type of amplifier over another are purely anecdotal and do not mean much. Many amps considered in the group of "best made" are solid state. I have never seen anybody drive subwoofers with a tube amp. There are great tube amplifiers and I have no doubt they can be very compelling with certain types of loud speakers. 
If anything, broad band performance influences performance in the audio band in a positive way. I know in my experience amps that go down to DC make better bass even though there is nothing audible below 18 Hz. 
As for vinyl my own pet theory is that there is something about the low level background noise that biases of dither's our brains. Just a thought. 
So if CD quality is 44.1 kHz and based upon 20 - 20,000hz.
Higher sample rates are still (as far as I know?) still from 20-20,000hz,but those sample rates could be easily quadruple that with modern bandwidths and technology.

Is it plausible that recordings that are captured through a broader frequency range (than considered hearing range), requiring a higher sample rate could bring digital closer to or even as good as analogue?

I have read about how engineers arrived at the sample rates for CD for example, and the OP has posted a paper that may question the basis for the sample rates, that it was an oversight from the beginning?

rixthetrick
Is it plausible that recordings that are captured through a broader frequency range (than considered hearing range), requiring a higher sample rate could bring digital closer to or even as good as analogue?
Sure, it's plausible. Why not listen to some hi-res digital and decide for yourself? Qobuz might be a good place for you to start.
Inadequate sample rate, yes. But oversight? Probably more like just your everyday engineering/marketing tradeoff. Happens all the time.

What I find interesting is when I reported here that my deaf from birth Aunt Bessie could "hear" music it was met with derision and insults. From the Hateful 18 granted, but still. So it was interesting to see in this paper:

"In a paper published in Science, Lenhardt et al. report that "bone-conducted ultrasonic hearing has been found capable of supporting frequency discrimination and speech detection in normal, older hearing-impaired, and profoundly deaf human subjects."

So take that, H18!
Dear friends : The human been skin has thousands of nervous ends/terminations that are extremely sensible and detect anything. There are hundreds of it by square mm. and from here goes to our brain.

It’s not only the bones that can detect and are sensible to SPLs but as I posted: hair, skin and all our body and this is not anectdotal issue. All what our full body sense is the experiences on MUSIC/SPLs that are detected and that we live it always.

Here something on the bones:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16019175/


If we wanted something more elaborated then read this:


http://www.tinnitusjournal.com/articles/response-of-human-skull-to-boneconducted-sound-in-the-audiometricultrasonic-range.pdf

and you can take a look to the References at the end of the article.


R.