The audible harmonic count of a note depends on hearing’s 16 kHz upper limit

Evidence

There is no theoretical upper limit to the number of harmonics which could be present in the output from any particular instrument, although for many instruments there are acoustic limits imposed by the structure of the instrument itself. An upper limit can be set though, in terms of the number of harmonics which could be present based on the upper frequency limit of the hearing system, for which a practical limit might be 16 000 Hz — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 799

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• QUESTION: Worth noting that this 16,000 Hz ‘practical limit’ varies hugely with age and hearing damage — a possible tension with the fixed number the text then derives.
• SHARE: A useful concrete figure for anyone working with electronic instrument design or audio synthesis — the arithmetic that 440 Hz yields 36 audible harmonics.

Related

• The number of harmonics audible halves with each octave rise in pitch (similarity 0.91)
• A note needs a minimum cycle count to be heard as pitched (similarity 0.81)
• Most instruments occupy only a portion of the audible frequency range (similarity 0.80)
• Only about 1,400 discriminable pitches exist across the entire audible range (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Higher pitched notes spread harmonics so wide that formant peaks vanish #expands (0.90) — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 1354