Hearing threshold for pure tones above 20 kHz

Abstract

Hearing thresholds for pure tones from 2 kHz to 28 kHz were measured. A 2AFC procedure combined with a 3-down 1-up transformed up-down method was employed to obtain threshold values that were less affected by listener's criterion of judgment. From some listeners, threshold values of 88 dB SPL or higher were obtained for a tone at 24 kHz, whereas thresholds could not be obtained from all participants at 26 kHz and above. Furthermore, thresholds were also measured under masking by a noise low-pass filtered at 20 kHz. At frequencies above 20 kHz, the difference of threshold values between with and without the masking noise was a few decibels, indicating that the tone detection was not affected by subharmonic components that might have appeared in the lower frequency regions. The results of measurement also showed that the threshold increased rather gradually for tones from 20 to 24 kHz whereas it increased sharply from 14 to 20 kHz.

A Meta-Analysis of High Resolution Audio Perceptual Evaluation

“…[25,60,61] noted that intermodulation distortion may result in aliasing of high frequency content, and [63] remarked on the audibility of the noise floor for 16 bit formats at high listening levels. [23] had participants blindfolded, in order to eliminate visual distractions, and [56], though finding a null result when comparing two high resolution formats, still noted that the strongest results were among participants who conducted the test with headphones.…”

“…This has been adapted from [77], with a focus on the types of biases common to these tests. In particular, we are concerned with biases that may be introduced due to the methodology (e.g., the test may be biased towards inability to discriminate high resolution content if listeners are asked to select stimuli closest to "live" without defining "live," as in [72]), the experimental design (e.g., level imbalance as in [45,46] or intermodulation distortion as in [25,60,61] may result in false positive discrimination), or the choice of stimuli (e.g., stimuli may not have contained high resolution content as in [58], or used test signals that may not capture whatever behavior might cause perception of high resolution content, as in [26,59] leading to false …”

“…Table 1 provides a near complete listing of all perceptual studies (i.e., listening tests) involving high resolution audio. Studies generally are divided into those focused on [59] Same different [25,26,60,61] 2IFC…”

“…Though many argue that this would not be the primary cause of high resolution content perception, it is nevertheless an important question. [36,37,39,40] have investigated this extensively, and with positive results, although it could be subject to further statistical analysis.…”

Changes in absolute hearing threshold depending on sound pressure level of a previous sound

“…As a threshold measurement method, two alternative forced choice (2AFC) method is well known and used in many previous studies [4,6,21]. In this study, however, this method needs much time to perform the three kinds of test, and experimental participants are considered to be hard to give an attention to the test.…”