Digital Mind 🧠

🪵 The Threshold

Normal hearing is most sensitive near 2 to 5 kHz

Properties2
tagsja-picks, candy, factual_claims, trade, corroborated, xref, category/factual-claims
aliases@fastl_psychoacoustics_2007, loc. 168

3 min read

Normal hearing is most sensitive near 2 to 5 kHz

Evidence

In the frequency range between 2 and 5 kHz almost every subject with normal hearing exhibits a very sensitive range in which very small sound pressure levels below 0 dB are reached. — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 168

At low frequencies, threshold in quiet requires a relatively high sound pressure level reaching about 40 dB at 50 Hz. The level at 200 Hz has already dropped to about 15 dB. For frequencies between 0.5 and 2 kHz, the threshold in quiet for the subject indicated in Fig. 2.2 remains almost independent of frequency, an effect which is relatively rare. In many cases threshold in quiet shows some excursions or small humps. In the frequency range between 2 and 5 kHz almost every subject with normal hearing exhibits a very sensitive range in which very small sound pressure levels below 0 dB are reached. For frequencies above 5 kHz, threshold in quiet shows peaks and valleys that not only vary individually but also characteristically for each subject. In many cases, threshold remains between 0 and 15 dB as long as frequency is not above 12 kHz. For even higher frequencies, threshold in quiet increases rapidly and reaches, at 16 to 18 kHz, a limit above which no sensation is produced even at high levels. This limit is dependent on the age of the subject: it is somewhere between 16 and 18 kHz at an age of 20-25 years provided that the subject has not already been exposed to sounds with levels that produce a hearing loss. — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 168

Categorization

  • CANDY: Fun fact: healthy ears can hear sounds below the ‘zero dB’ reference level — good elevator-conversation material.
  • corroborated: 4 independent passages support this claim — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 168
  • XREF: connects to: The dynamic range of hearing is largest between 500 and 6000 Hz — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 94; Auditory sensitivity varies nonuniformly across the frequency range — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 648; Noise-induced hearing loss first appears near 4 kHz as an audiometric notch (+5 more)

Broader Connections

✉️

Backlinks