Frequency Charts



Hey folks

Just curious as to the reason they graph out frequency charts as they do. What im refferring to is the fact that they Display 20 - 100hz on the first 1/4 of the chart, then 100hz to 1khz on the 2nd quarter, followed byu the 1k-10k, and lastly the 10-20k, meaning they graph out half of the hearing range in the last 1/4

i guess this is a kind of a dumb question, it just seems that by reading the first half of the graph covers just 1/20th of the range while the other 19/20th's are all crammed together.

i know that it would be pretty difficult to put a graph in a magazine of 20,000 without using some technique to compact it. Is there any logical reason that group it out the way they do other than to save space?
slappy
That's just what log scales look like. The plots are variables which are exponents of a base of value ten. If you dump the base and exponents and just look at the value of the variables, the scale will be linear, e.g. (log)100 = 2, (log)1000 = 3.

"Is there any logical reason that group it out the way they do other than to save space?"

No, you are right - its to save space.
Music is best looked at in terms of musical notes, not frequencies. Since an octave translates to a doubling of frequency the deep bass octave of 20Hz to 40Hz has the same number of notes as the high treble octave of 10kHz to 20kHz. The log graph better correlates to how humans actually hear music. Simply put, there are more musical notes in the lower frequencies.
Ditto, log scales closer approx how we perceive sound. like the difference between "white" noise and "pink noise."

White noise is more or less equal energy (noise) over the entire range of frequencies, from say 20hz-20khz. So if you were to think of it as visible light, the even balance would appear to look "white." Even though white noise is even from 20-20k, it sounds like it has more excess high frequency noise than low freq. This matches our perceived hearing. It's balanced, but it doesn't sure sound that way!

However, pink noise has more energy down low. So if you were to think of it as visible light, it would appear to look the color pink (redish). But pink noise to most humans, appears to "sound" even balanced over your entire hearing range.

That's sort of oversimplifying it, but you get the itea. Well, that's at least how I understand it. Some of comparisons only make sense when charted on a log scale. Freq response as perceived by humans is one of them.