So I’ve listened to all the arguments from people who don’t understand the Nyquist theorem for why audio higher than 44khz doesn’t actually matter and you can’t hear it bla bla bla. From literal decades of personal experience of hearing the difference from the production side and knowing that from a physics perspective that it’s just not true, I present objective evidence that you can hear frequencies above 20khz.

First: a sample of a track I’m currently mixing/mastering

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WvSAkDAlV4g0joqmlgJcVSDKrLBq3bkO/view?usp=sharing

Second: the same exact sample at the same exact volume with a 22khz tone applied.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LK6n5zd6QsrzcfW9n967NPsAzp2BRaA8/view?usp=sharing

If you can hear the difference (spoiler alert: you can), then you objectively can hear frequencies above 20hkz and by extension you must necessarily concede that there is a point to having waveforms capable of representing higher frequencies.

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  • macbrett@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Read up on intermodulation distortion. Real systems are not completely linear. Superimposing a high amplitude supersonic frequency on music can indeed cause audible effects. But they are not an improvement.

    • siditious@alien.topOPBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      This is where the conversation should start honestly. Why are they not an improvement? From an audio editing perspective those frequencies above 22khz contain a lot of information which can be useful for a number of things (FFT/DFT/STFT/AI/etc.). Modern synthesizers create frequencies in that range and many studio rats (myself included) will tell you that there are sounds which are better when preserving those high frequencies at 96khz

      • macbrett@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        When frequencies mix in a nonlinear system, sum and difference frequencies are created. When supersonic frequencies are involved, the difference frequencies can dip down well into the audible range, and because they are not harmonically related to the actual musical signal, they sound awful.

        In a theoretically perfect system, you could have ultra wide bandwidth recordings without this problem. While few people can actually hear anything above 20KHz (By the time we reach adulthood, most people can only hear sounds up to 15-17 kHZ.), at least there would be no intermodulation distortion products to degrade the music below 20KHz.