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Is 1K the center of the musical universe?

Posted by mqracing (M) on November 17, 2003 at 08:07:51

In Reply to: Re: phase error posted by dave slagle on November 3, 2003 at 10:00:50:

Dave wrote:

::::...the other thing that always seems to be lost in this entire situation is the load presented at other frequencies than the lowest. Everyone seems to look at the extremes, and neglects what happens in the middle where 90% of the music is. :::::

::::limited inductance will compromise the lows and capacitances will effect the highs. the thing most people neglect to look at is what happens in the middle... say 1K.::::

does 90 percent of the music reside in the middle frequencies which has been stipulated as say 1K?

Having been an audio enthusiast since the mid seventies.... I remember well the days when companies would do their testing at 1Khz. 1 khz was a 'favorable' frequency because it generally allowed the manufacturer to print a very favorable statistic. Power claims many times used this trick and various other tricks to get that power rating up. but when the poor consumer used the amp full range the amp could not meet it's published claims.

back to the question at hand. Is 1K the center of the universe?

apparently not if we look at the piano. Middle C is 440 hertz. And if I understand correctly.... half of the piano's octaves are above this midpoint and half below.

therefore the range of frequencies (assuming correct count of octaves and correct enunciation of middle c) would range from 27 hertz to 7040 hertz. but the middle of the piano is 440 hertz not 3506 hertz or 1000 hertz.

Piano seems to be a commonly used instrument and present on a great number of recordings. Should we bee concerned about the whole range of the piano or just what the amp/speaker/device under scrutiny does at 1000 hertz?

recall that half of the octaves in the piano at at or below 440 hz.

Some of the confusion I sense in the audio community and DIY circles is that we don't discriminate or appreciate the following fundamental concept or idea.

the bottom half octaves of the piano only have a freq range of perhaps 413 hertz. while the top (if we are not careful) appears to have or contain so much more music since encompasses a wider range of frequencies (6600 hertz).

so if we are not carful we might be tempted to say that the top half of the piano covers a lot more music... while in fact the number of notes on the keyboard is evenly divided btwn top and bottom.

I see this confusion often when folks look at freq response say of an amplifier. say we have one amp which goes from 50 hertz to 50 kilohertz while another (at the same stated deviation and power level) goes from 25 hertz to 25 khz...

if were not careful we might think that somehow the first amp is the "better" since it has 25,000 hz more extension on the top than the while only giving up 25 hertz on the bottom.

the second amp must surely be a relative poor bargain to the first since it foregoes 25,000 hertz on the top and only gets 25 hertz more response on the bottom.

but yet each amp covers the very same number of octaves.

1K is GENERALLY an easy 'test' for amplfiers/speakers/devices relative to the frequency extremes. The mischief in much of electrical/electronic engineering lies at the ends of the freq spectrums not smack dab in the middle.

and, when we look at magnetics as Dave was doing... we should realize that cores do the lion's share of their "work" at suitably low frequencies... by 1K you can just about take the core and throw it out the window. Actually, many transformer models for analyzing the mid-range frequencies do exactly that.... they do not include the core and it's characteristics in the analysis at all.

so I disagree that 1K is the center of our musical universe.

cheers,

MSL

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