On a good set of headphones that can actually reproduce the highest frequencies I can hear up to 24kHz (my own testing). On the laptop speakers I'm on right now I can hear up to 20 kHz, but the 20, 19, 18 kHz samples are rather quiet.
Beyond about 18 kHz things become more of a "I sense that there is a sound there" instead of a "I hear an audible tone." But at those highest frequencies (>20kHz) I can definitely tell when they are on vs. when they are off.
I'm 32 I can hear 18 at a normal distance (with tv on in the background) and 19 leaning up to the speakers.. 17-17.4 are the most annoying, actually really annoying sound, maybe it should be my SMS tone at work ;-)
I'm 36, and I can hear all of them! 22kHz is definitely faint, and it's hard to hear with alot of other noise going on, but I can make out the frequency and even hum the "note" back. The 22kHz tone reminds me of that faint TV ringing I sometimes hear that drives me nuts.
At 52, I can hear 12khz, but not 14. I guess that puts me right about where I'm 'supposed' to be. I'm with EscapePod... I hope all the kids get 14khz or higher ringtones so I don't have to hear their phones going off all the time. Even in class (I'm a professor), I really wouldn't care if their phones rang if I couldn't hear them.
I'm 47, and can just hear 15KHz. 14KHz is painful. I've always been overly sensitive to the higher frequencies, not in the sense of hearing way up high, but rather experiencing physical pain when I hear anything over about 10KHz. Must be part of why I gravitated towards working with bass instruments and play the cello myself.
On a note about listening to these tones on a computer; I found nothing was audible above 12KHz at first, but then remembered that my RealTek Audio setup was such that most volume above 10KHz was scrubbed. As I said, those frequencies and me do not get along. So I temporarily disabled the mixer and re-tested, and found that a) the range I could hear went a lot higher, and b) that the background hum/hiss in the test tones vanished and a clear tone was audible. If anyone's having trouble hearing these tones, and especially if you hear ANY background noise besides a clear sine signal, disable your EQ and try again.
I'd guess that speaker quality might play a large role in hearing some of the higher frequencies. I listened through the speakers of my Asus 901 netbook first, and found it somewhat more difficult to hear the upper levels of my range. Listening again with BeyerDynamic DT 880 headphones was a lot more focused in all frequencies.
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Gerard Ivan Samija
Microsoft MVP
forum moderator for PocketPCFAQ.com
I could just barely hear the 14 khz, the 12 and the 10, but the only one that I truly heard was the 8 khz. And I am quite a bit younger than 60. But, I've known that my hearing has been going for a while, and if there is a genetic basis for this, it's pretty certain that I'm in trouble. Sucks.
At least I don't have to worry about hearing the mosquito ring tone, though. That must really suck to be able to hear it, based on the 8 khz. When I was doing these my kids, who were upstairs, were complaining about it.
[edit] I just did it with earbuds in and it was quite a bit different. I could definitely hear 12 very clearly. I'm just a bit worse than I should be, apparently.
Hi Jason,
don't you think, that ability to hear some frequencies has total dependency on your sound equipment in the first place?
If your speakers/headphones cannot transfer those high or low freqencies, there's no way for you to hear that, even if your ear would be able to catch 22kHz at 0dB.
You can measure this stuff only with reference speakers or headphones, which can transfer at least 20Hz - 22kHz in LINEAR manner, so all frequencies has equal amplitude. Usually around 0dB.
See your headphones/speakers specs (if any) and the graph showing the frequency response.
Which do we lose first: our hearing or our memory? I am positive that the original discussions we had about this ringtone were well before 2007 and closer to 2004!
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