For The Beat Heads... Can you hear above 17khz?

Yes! I have been slipping on the "For The Beat Heads" entries. I could try to come up with some sort of explanation as to why but, this has been sitting in my e-mail since July. Not to mention that I am only posting now because I just had a conversation with my boy from Two Three Productions (http://www.myspace.com/2ndand3rdproductions) about mixing. I just forwarded him about 12 e-mails Mau sent me about mixing and thought this would have been a whole lot easier had I just posted them when he sent them. So anyway here is the oldest (I think) e-mail Mau has sent. Peep...

"Can you hear above 17khz? Tip for bettering translation of your mixes.

Open a test tone generator, and run a pure sine wave all the way up to 17khz.
Can you still hear it? Well, the average adult can not hear above 13khz. That ringing in your ears sometimes, that is a frequency being lost :-( This is due to natural aging, loud concerts, clubs, car radios, headphones, etc.

For engineering, it is essential to know your frequency cut off, as you may be leaving in frequencies that may sound harsh that you just can't hear. You submit your mix to someone and they say "that is too sharp" or it may actually hurt their ears when played on large speakers.
Luckily, I can hear up to 18khz, for now at least, i'm sure this will be gone in a year :-(.

However, though this may make you doubt your ability to mix, remember that this is normal.


So to help the translation of my mixes, I slap on a good eq on the master fader (now I have PSP Neon Linear Phase EQ tasked for master bus eq) and do a 6 - 12db low pass filter at around 17.5khz. This is the point at which any lower affects the original signal, and any higher does not make a difference.


Good to do in practice, of course, trust your ears...


If you think this is a crock of sh*t, feel free to load up a mix you think is great, and look at the spectral analysis of it, I've seen cut offs as low as 15khz.

*NOTE the loudness or enhance button on a stereo system is usally a smiley face eq (low shelf raise at 170hz, high shelf raise at 5k or there abouts), so if you have artifacts above the frequency that you can hear, this stuff gets raised too. Not to mention if there is bus compression going on, it gets raised...
Just another tip, use it wisely.