'Life Above 20kh' Research Paper, Harmonics (Overtones)


I happened across this study about sound frequencies beyond 20kh. Harmonics (I prefer the term Overtones)

http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~boyk/spectra/spectra.htm

Aside from the study’s purpose, skimming the text is fascinating, sends my/your inquisitive mind in many directions.

Think about your listening room when reading his extremely detailed measurements to ascertain/eliminate any external contributions to his measurements.

Check out the amount of sound energy beyond 20kh of various instruments, crash cymbals particularly revealing. Jangling keys also a surprise.

The comments about a Piano’s Altered Harmonics including the strings/sound board/floor, I found surprising. I’ve always known how difficult it is to record a piano, this must be part of the challenge.

Even though test subjects say they cannot hear the super tweeter, experimenters could measure that the super-frequencies were detected by ..... , awareness and the brain’s perception ability are different things
..................................

Overtones. ’Analog Gets the Overtones Rght’.

I’ve often said, after a whole lotta years, the only way I can begin to explain why I prefer analog, is ’Analog Gets the Overtones Rght’.

Reel to Reel, my noisiest format, is my most preferred source. LP favored over CD. Tubes over SS. Myself, and ANY/EVERYBODY listening here to comparisons over the years has the same preferences.

More reason to get our ears professionally cleaned!!

Elliott




elliottbnewcombjr
Dear friends: Many years ago as many as my very old ADS L2030 speakers I learned about the importance of our clothes fabric kind.

In those times I looked and read it about a top speaker performer that was using long hair wool inside its boxes for speaker dampening.

My ADS came with fiber glass inside for that same " action "/dampening and I took the choice to modified it by changing all those, even toxic/cancer , glass fiber by long hair wool ( I think I used around 50kg on each one of these really big speakers. ) and that was a great move for the quality performance level of those speakers and I really mean it. As if the L2030 were new/different speakers.

From those times I left to use synthetic fabric clothes and only natural fabric/fibers as: wool, cotton, silk, linen, leather and the like.

You can make the test in this topic too: put you synthetic clothes and listen your system and then change those synthetic clothes by all natural fiber clothes and you must hear the differences for the better.

That’s whay too the furniture or seat couch/chair in your room/system must be made it only by natural fibers.

Returning to harmonics I have to say that the natural color that has the live MUSIC is " painted " by all developed harmonics, this is exactly what we are hearing in live events or in our room/system.
There is why the importance of the electronics/speakers characteristics.

R.
Dear @teo_audio : " which are also correct in the critical to human areas of signal reproduction "

there are not a true critical areas of signal reproduction. According that link and my posts here and elsewhere everything is critical from 16hz to over 150khz.
All harmonics modulates what we are " hearing " and puts the natural color MUSIC has.

"" requires an approximate 250khz plus sampling rate, and zero jitter of any kind. at a signal bit depth of at least 20 bits.

currently, we are incapable of recreating/building this. (Jitter) ""

Well today DACs comes with 32bits/384 characterisitcs, way higher than what we need.

Jitter?, LP is way worst than digital about because the cartridge stylus tip can’t follows the grooves modulations with continuity. The stylus tip is jumping at each great obstacle name it groove. This is worst that anything you imagine happens through digital.
Along that exist a tracking error in pivoted tonearms that impedes to pick up what is in the recording and where do you leave all the tonearm/cartridge/LP surface/TT developed resonances/distortions/noises added for that terrible inverse RIAA eq and all those additional gain stages in the electronics where the cartridge signal must pass thorugh ! ! !



All those is superior to today digital alternative?



""" Digital did some of the most critical (to human hearing) things wrong.. """

please tell me a computer or any digital instrument/device that does not use BITS. In which world are you living?

R.


Boring.
"This sounds better than that on MY system"
Sgt. Pepper's was created on a multidubbed 4 track. It SHOULD sound better mass produced on a limited analog media.
BFD
Blah blah honk honk.
I like a lot of music more than other.
You probably don't agree.
There is NO I'm right or you are wrong.
I think  rauliruegas1's point  is can't be overstated - that we don't just hear music, we experience it, and that means through all the senses and faculties within the human mechanism.

Science is a long long way from being able to measure all the subtle faculties in play, so focusing solely on the brain's processing of a single transport will remain incomplete.

First of all this paper proves absolutely nothing. It brings up some interesting avenues for research which is about it. One tenet od scientific research is that the results have to be reproducible. No body has reproduced anything.
Music is absolutely not just heard but experienced. Anybody with good subwoofers knows that. Then there are the visual aspects. In spite of the sound being butte awful in many live venues the thrill of seeing a live performance frequently (but not always) overcomes that problem. Sitting at home staring at loudspeakers distorts the sound stage. Close your eyes and instrument size and location becomes better defined. Playback of a good concert video (with a big screen between the speakers takes it up another notch.
As for ultrasonics ? Very few speakers do much above 20 kHz. If they do it is so focused that you would have to be directly in front of and at the level of all the tweeters to be exposed to it. Anybody experienced in reading EEGs will tell you that it is absolutely impossible to draw a conclusion like this from these tracings. There are types of brain imaging that would be more likely to tell you something. We know for instance that people blind from a young age transfer their visual cortex to sound interpretation instead. Stevie Wonder is such an example. 
Any of the examples above of people preferring one type of amplifier over another are purely anecdotal and do not mean much. Many amps considered in the group of "best made" are solid state. I have never seen anybody drive subwoofers with a tube amp. There are great tube amplifiers and I have no doubt they can be very compelling with certain types of loud speakers. 
If anything, broad band performance influences performance in the audio band in a positive way. I know in my experience amps that go down to DC make better bass even though there is nothing audible below 18 Hz. 
As for vinyl my own pet theory is that there is something about the low level background noise that biases of dither's our brains. Just a thought.