Why do some earphones not have freq range of up to 20khz?

[applesuxD]

I see earphone brands selling earphones in a freq range of only up to 18khz, 16khz.. and that begs the question

 

why not 20khz?

 

Is it the music? like do normal music not need such?

 

Is it some way to make a sound signature...?

 

i get rather confused on this

 

educate me dear techies

 

-applehaterinconfusion

[BoredErica]

Generally people say that humans can hear from 20hz to 20khz. Also, specs like "frequency range" is generally useless. A frequency response graph would be more useful. But at least for headphones, measuring sounds at such high frequencies can get gnarly as well.

 

Somebody correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think you're missing out on much if some earphone cuts off at 18khz.

[Enderman]

because its cheaper to build something that does 16khz than 20khz

and 99% of people wont notice anyway

[Enderman]

btw this is 128kbps MP3:

[BoredErica]

Yeah, I just popped a song just like the picture you showed. Well... some tracks are only available in pretty compressed MP3, life is not perfect.

[applesuxD]

5 minutes ago, Dark_wizzie said:

Generally people say that humans can hear from 20hz to 20khz. Also, specs like "frequency range" is generally useless. A frequency response graph would be more useful. But at least for headphones, measuring sounds at such high frequencies can get gnarly as well.

 

Somebody correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think you're missing out on much if some earphone cuts off at 18khz.

 

what about 16khz

[BoredErica]

8 minutes ago, applesuxD said:

 

what about 16khz

I think it depends on the track, but I think a person listening closely could tell a difference. If you're buying earphones that are that cheap, it's probably not such a big deal in the first place.

 

It's not like having things after 16khz cut off would be the only problem with those earphones. Wonky frequency response, higher distortion, those things would probably matter more. But once again, that spec is kind of meaningless in the first place.

[Pomfinator]

While theoretically human hearing goes up to 20khz, even as early as your late teens you can start losing the upper most frequencies of your hearing range.  One of the ways lossy compression methods work is using a low-pass filter, which will basically cut anything off past 17khz.  Besides, most of the data in the upper most frequencies are just noise

 

I haven't tested myself in a while, but I think I literally can't hear anything past 17khz.  I think if you ran a low-pass filter on a lossless file most people wouldn't be able to tell a difference (is that even possible?).

[BoredErica]

1 minute ago, Pomfinator said:

While theoretically human hearing goes up to 20khz, even as early as your late teens you can start losing the upper most frequencies of your hearing range.  One of the ways lossy compression methods work is using a low-pass filter, which will basically cut anything off past 17khz.

Hmm, well said. My hearing is similar to yours.

[SSL]

Frequency range specs are useless, so I wouldn't read too much into the numbers. Most of the time, frequency range specs are used to enforce prestige pricing; i.e. a manufacturer wants to differentiate SKUs in a product line.

 

Because differences in audio gear is often very hard to objectively define, this leaves the marketing department of a company with few options but to basically pull specs out of their asses. Normally this means rounding the numbers up so that more expensive products look worth the money; but it can also mean making less expensive products look worse so that the more profitable ones look more attractive.

 

In the even that a headphone actually only goes up to 16-18kHz, this could just be a side effect of using cheap parts to hit a price point. The extremes of the audible spectrum are the hardest to reproduce, so they are often the first to go in a low quality product. It could also be an intentional compromise, designed to avoid distortion due to driver break-up that would sound even worse than a simple roll-off. As others have pointed out, the music that most people listen to has been degraded by lossy compression schemes that discard the high frequencies anyway.