5 ms·

What about transhumans? I'm looking forward to my HiFi Cochleatron 9000(tm) when my hearing starts to go. Then I'll be mighty glad we made all these high-res r

What about transhumans? I'm looking forward to my HiFi Cochleatron 9000(tm) when my hearing starts to go. Then I'll be mighty glad we made all these high-res recordings.

exikyut 9y ago
That makes for some genuinely interesting thought experiments. What if, this actually becomes possible, but we discover that because we previously couldn't hear these frequencies, our instruments and equipment are HORRIBLY mis-tuned and sound terrible? We may end up having to re-record tons of stuff. Something something premature optimization. And part of me is glad that the art of hand-making instruments is not yet lost; we might need the originals in the future. Disclaimer: I say this as a completely naive person when it comes to instruments. The answer to this may be "if it wasn't built to resonate at frequency X, it won't by itself," which would be a good thing.
- photojosh 9y ago
  Higher frequencies aren't even in most recordings, so we wouldn't have to re-record them for that reason. And if they were (such as in 96 kHz hi-res audio), you could just run it through a low-pass filter to strip off the higher frequencies.
  - exikyut 9y ago
    Ah, good point. And... heh, using a filter to strip out the audio we used all that extra filesize to deliberately store. Haha. :)
    - photojosh 9y ago
      My webapp manages photos for photography competitions. People upload 30MB JPEGs that would be visually lossless at a tenth of that file size. And I keep the originals, but actually resize down to 300KB for every function within the software. Haven't had a single complaint about image quality... :)
  - sjwright 9y ago
    Even if the engineer pressed the "192" button on their field recorder or DAW, chances are the instrument isn't going to be doing much interesting over 20kHz and/or the microphone isn't going to be particularly sensitive over 20kHz.
- elihu 9y ago
  Most instruments generate harmonics that are integer multiples of the fundamental frequency, and some go a lot higher than human hearing. As you go up the harmonic series, the harmonics get (logarithmically) closer together. Our brains interpret close-together notes as dissonant, so higher harmonics could be kind of obnoxious to hear together. They might be "in-tune", but just too close to be enjoyable. (Imagine an extremely bright harpsichord.) There's another effect that comes into play, though. There's a minimum pitch separation between simultaneous notes that we expect, and when notes are closer than that, they clash. That separation is usually around a minor third (~300 cents) in most of the human hearing range, but in the bass it's a lot wider, and in the high treble it's smaller. That's why you can play two notes a major second apart (~200 cents) on a piano in the high treble and it sounds okay, but down in the low bass it sounds muddy if they're closer than about a major third or perfect fourth (~400-500 cents). So, if we extrapolate into higher frequency ranges, then it's not unreasonable to expect that we would be able to interpret musical intervals that are a lot closer than 200 cents as consonant. It's also possible that the minimum note separation thing is just an artifact of how our ears physically work, and that an artificial ear would have no such limitation. Which could open the possibility of enjoying kinds of music that we can't currently imagine as pleasant with our normal ears.
  - baddox 9y ago
    Because of the power decrease as you go up the overtone series, I'd suspect that being able to hear higher frequencies wouldn't cause very much trouble. However, the ability to hear higher fundamental frequencies would surely change harmonic theory! This is assuming that our pitch perception of high fundamental frequencies increased accordingly.
cat199 9y ago
what makes you think your consciousness is capable of processing sounds in that range even if the ear is physically capable of it?
labster 9y ago
There's the all too real prospect that Hatsune Miku has been singing secret messages calling for the robot uprising, and none of us humans can hear those frequencies. Winter is coming desu~! The good news is that you strip out all of this robot propaganda and still hear the exact same music, simply by encoding at a reasonable rate.

What about transhumans? I'm looking forward to my HiFi Cochleatron 9000(tm) when my hearing starts to go. Then I'll be mighty glad we made all these high-res recordings.

exikyut 9y ago

That makes for some genuinely interesting thought experiments. What if, this actually becomes possible, but we discover that because we previously couldn't hear these frequencies, our instruments and equipment are HORRIBLY mis-tuned and sound terrible? We may end up having to re-record tons of stuff. Something something premature optimization. And part of me is glad that the art of hand-making instruments is not yet lost; we might need the originals in the future. Disclaimer: I say this as a completely naive person when it comes to instruments. The answer to this may be "if it wasn't built to resonate at frequency X, it won't by itself," which would be a good thing.

photojosh 9y ago
Higher frequencies aren't even in most recordings, so we wouldn't have to re-record them for that reason. And if they were (such as in 96 kHz hi-res audio), you could just run it through a low-pass filter to strip off the higher frequencies.
- exikyut 9y ago
  Ah, good point. And... heh, using a filter to strip out the audio we used all that extra filesize to deliberately store. Haha. :)
  - photojosh 9y ago
    My webapp manages photos for photography competitions. People upload 30MB JPEGs that would be visually lossless at a tenth of that file size. And I keep the originals, but actually resize down to 300KB for every function within the software. Haven't had a single complaint about image quality... :)
- sjwright 9y ago
  Even if the engineer pressed the "192" button on their field recorder or DAW, chances are the instrument isn't going to be doing much interesting over 20kHz and/or the microphone isn't going to be particularly sensitive over 20kHz.
elihu 9y ago
Most instruments generate harmonics that are integer multiples of the fundamental frequency, and some go a lot higher than human hearing. As you go up the harmonic series, the harmonics get (logarithmically) closer together. Our brains interpret close-together notes as dissonant, so higher harmonics could be kind of obnoxious to hear together. They might be "in-tune", but just too close to be enjoyable. (Imagine an extremely bright harpsichord.) There's another effect that comes into play, though. There's a minimum pitch separation between simultaneous notes that we expect, and when notes are closer than that, they clash. That separation is usually around a minor third (~300 cents) in most of the human hearing range, but in the bass it's a lot wider, and in the high treble it's smaller. That's why you can play two notes a major second apart (~200 cents) on a piano in the high treble and it sounds okay, but down in the low bass it sounds muddy if they're closer than about a major third or perfect fourth (~400-500 cents). So, if we extrapolate into higher frequency ranges, then it's not unreasonable to expect that we would be able to interpret musical intervals that are a lot closer than 200 cents as consonant. It's also possible that the minimum note separation thing is just an artifact of how our ears physically work, and that an artificial ear would have no such limitation. Which could open the possibility of enjoying kinds of music that we can't currently imagine as pleasant with our normal ears.
- baddox 9y ago
  Because of the power decrease as you go up the overtone series, I'd suspect that being able to hear higher frequencies wouldn't cause very much trouble. However, the ability to hear higher fundamental frequencies would surely change harmonic theory! This is assuming that our pitch perception of high fundamental frequencies increased accordingly.

cat199 9y ago

what makes you think your consciousness is capable of processing sounds in that range even if the ear is physically capable of it?

labster 9y ago

There's the all too real prospect that Hatsune Miku has been singing secret messages calling for the robot uprising, and none of us humans can hear those frequencies. Winter is coming desu~! The good news is that you strip out all of this robot propaganda and still hear the exact same music, simply by encoding at a reasonable rate.