How low pitch can you hear

Older gentlemen are the hardest for me to hear — probably a combination of the difficult low pitch and softer volume. Of the important people in my life, my father-in-law is my biggest hearing challenge. By now, I have learned the voice patterns of all my friends and family, and as you might expect, my ability to hear them varies widely!

Naturally, there are some people that I seek out more regularly because I can hear them better, while others I tend to avoid. This is sad, but true. I sometimes wonder if I should choose new friends based on the sound of their voice — it might just make things easier going forward. I try not to do that, but I assume it is self-fulfilling to some extent since I probably enjoy my time more with those that are easier for me to hear. Having a good understanding of your own hearing can be very helpful.

I know when I walk into a situation what my particular hearing challenges will likely be and can then do my best to counteract them. For example, I can try to sit closer to the men at a conference, or be sure to position myself to speech read a particularly challenging voice.

The answer to this question is clearly no. You might suspect, that the higher the frequency, the louder we perceive a noise, but frequency does not tell us how loud a sound is. Intensity or loudness is the amount of energy of a vibration and is measured in decibels dB. If a sound is loud, it has a high intensity. On the other side of the human hearing range, the highest possible frequency heard without discomfort is 20,Hz. While 20 to 20,Hz forms the absolute borders of the human hearing range, our hearing is most sensitive in the — Hz frequency range.

Frequency is a physical quantity which gives number of vibrations per second whereas pitch is a perceptual quantity which depends upon the listener, in fact our ears detects the pitch not the frequency. The number of vibrations per second or frequency determines the pitch of a sound.

Frequency is directly proportional to pitch. Higher the frequency, higher the pitch. Most sounds are not what you would call a musical note, tone, or pitch. So in short, all sounds are made out of musical pitches, but not all sounds are musical pitches.

Sound pitch is the term given to the subjective sensation of the frequency of a sound wave. A high pitched sound correlates to a high frequency sound wave, and a low pitch to a low frequency wave, but pitch perception can be ambiguous and observer dependant.

Pitch is a black sticky substance that is left over after the distillation process of many substances. An example of pitch is the tar that is used in roofing. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search.

Press ESC to cancel. Skip to content Home Physics What is the difference between a high pitch sound and a low pitch sound? See Subscription Options. Go Paperless with Digital. Recent Articles by Education. Get smart. Sign up for our email newsletter. Sign Up. Support science journalism. Knowledge awaits. See Subscription Options Already a subscriber? Create Account See Subscription Options.

Continue reading with a Scientific American subscription. Subscribe Now You may cancel at any time. Hearing professionals use the audiogram to establish your hearing loss and as a tool for fitting hearing aids. The left ear is plotted with a black line. To find out your level of hearing, a hearing professional will play a series of beeps and ask you to raise your hand or press a button when you can hear them.

The professional will then repeat this with sounds of lower or higher frequencies. This threshold is plotted for both your ears as two separate lines on your audiogram. Your audiogram can tell you a lot about your hearing , including the frequencies you can hear and the volume you can hear them at. This is important to know because each sound you hear has a certain frequency.