Sound audibility depends on both its level and its frequency

Evidence

This chapter starts by discussing the most fundamental of questions regarding an auditory object: under what conditions does it exist? Two physical attributes limit the audibility of a frequency component of sound: the sound pressure level (SPL) and frequency. If the SPL is too low, nothing is heard. If it is too high, the sensation of sound is accompanied by the sensation of pain, and beyond some limit in the SPL the ears are destroyed. The threshold of pain is commonly taken as the upper limit of the SPL to generate auditory events in sound and voice techniques. On the other hand, sound components with too low frequencies are not perceived as sound, but more as a sensation of vibration, and sound components with too high frequency content are not perceived at all. The attributes also interact with tonal signals; the SPL threshold of audibility depends in a complicated manner on frequency. — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 971

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the two physical axes delimiting the existence of an auditory event: SPL and frequency, with the pain threshold as upper limit.
• XREF: connects to: Vocal transmission distance depends more on singing height than frequency — Almo Farina, Soundscape Ecology: Principles,…, 424; The ear’s just-noticeable amplitude difference depends on signal type, level, and frequency — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 636