There’s been a couple times now I have written about listening skills and listener development. The beginning or bottom rung is volume. Frequency response is nothing more than volume- how loud each different frequency sounds. Both these charts that is all they are for, the very bottom rung.
Nowhere on these are the higher levels of listening. There is no diagram for attack, fundamental, decay. No image focus, depth, palpable presence. Not presence, which is a frequency range, but palpable presence, the eerie feeling of the performer being physically present in the room.
Yet another level above these, every instrument, every person, every sound, has a fundamental frequency that is accompanied by a whole wide spectrum of harmonic resonances. Often these go far up into the ultra-sonic. Frequencies higher than we can hear. But yet, see the discussions on super-tweeters- NOT higher than we have hearing able to detect! Just because we don’t hear these as discrete tones doe not mean we don’t hear them. In fact there are more ear cells devoted to these than to the frequencies we can hear as discrete tones. It even turns out this ability to hear these ultra-sonic frequencies declines less with age than the commonly tasted frequency band used on both these charts.
When these ultra-sonic frequencies are present it greatly improves our sense of space and envelopment. Something very similar happens when the extreme low end is reproduced accurately. None of which- neither the frequency range nor the envelopment effects- are so much as hinted at on these graphics.
So yeah, nice work on the graphics. Good for what they are. Useful for learning to listen, especially if you are just starting out.
No millercarbon post is complete without the gratuitous dig. I mentioned listener development in the beginning. Two times recently I tried to initiate a serious discussion. Both times wrecked by the usual thread-wreckers. Imagine where we could be if these jackovs would just keep to themselves. We could just maybe climb up above the first rung of the ladder.
