Who Knows How High Your Hearing Goes? The Mosquito Ringtone Knows…
My slam on audiophiles earlier
today leads me next to a recently-read column by Ken C. Pohlmann in the January
2008 issue of Sound & Vision Magazine (which I've just discovered via the site's
search engine was predated by a more in-depth, and excellent, technical analysis
by David Ranada 1.5 years prior), which encouraged me to explore the 'mosquito
ringtone' phenomenon I'd been reading about on-and-off for the prior several
years. For those of you not 'in the know', many teenagers are supposedly loading
up their cellphones with high-frequency ringtones that, while audible to their
young and nimble auditory systems, are undetectable by 'old-timers'
(specifically: teachers).
I was reminded, as I read Pohlmann's piece, of the fact that to this day, I'm
able to hear the high-frequency whine of security systems in jewelry stores...a
tone of whose existence I wasn't able to convince my parents in my youth. With
my lingering security system perception as a suggestion of possible elderly high
frequency retention, I hit the Free Mosquito Ringtones website that Pohlmann's
writeup highlighted. Check it out; it includes a number of sample clips at
various high-pass cutoff frequencies which you can download (duh) or stream
directly from the site. Your results, of course, are dependent not only on your
ears (and brain) but also on your sound system and speakers, and on any
spectrum-masking aspects of the ambient environment. But (excuse me while I
brag) I was able to discern tones all the way up to 18.8 kHz when played back
through the sound system of my Windows XP Pro-powered Apple MacBook, headphone
jack-connected to my Klipsch speaker set (who knows what low-pass filtering in
that particular audio chain might have adversely affected my results). This was
the case even though the website claimed that only folks below 24 years of age
should be able to hear waves that high...and I'm 41 years (and almost 8 months)
old.
In retrospect, given past experience, maybe I shouldn't be so surprised at my
success. Then again, that was over seven years ago...How'd you do (and how old
are you)? |