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.
It’s literally the exact opposite. you’re hearing the result of *additive* interference. The samples are literally being added together which gives the result that I provided.
Yeah, but what you’re hearing is the effect of the high frequency tone on the sound waves in the audible range, you’re not hearing the high frequency tone itself (as it isn’t in the audible range). Just because you can hear a difference, doesn’t mean that you could ever blindly identify (detect) that the tone was there.
In any case, my point is that your post is poorly worded and it’s evident in all the replies of, “you’re just proving my point for me”. What you said and what you’re trying to convey are not aligned. The outcome is people telling you you’re wrong when you see it as them actually agreeing with you.
What I see is that this community does not follow the very first rule of the community which is “1. Be most excellent towards the community
And by “be most excellent” we mean no insults, derogatory remarks, personal attacks, threats, bullying, trolling, baiting, flaming, hate speech, racism, sexism, gatekeeping, or other behavior that makes humanity look like scum”
Everyone in the community would rather try to belittle me and nitpick at interpretation of my post when obviously you all understand exactly what I attempted to convey. But rather than just starting from there when clearly the entire community knew exactly what was happening (which is what I was illustrating) they would rather be pompous and arrogant.
The fact of the matter is that hearing the *effect* of the high frequency is semantically synonymous with broadly hearing the high frequency. I didn’t say that I can hear a pure 22khz tone on its own which would be much more semantically narrow than what I said. You chose an interpretation and chose to be rude based on that interpretation.