To Mary P., Bob Muller, Jenny Goodspeed and all jmdlers who get the whole
list:
Thanks to those named for writing me directly. Those whose responses were
NJC I wouldn't see in any case, for I get the only-Joni digest --- and I
didn't see my post or the "SJC" responses on the Thursday digest. Maybe
they'll be on Friday's.
One or more said that six octaves of vocal range had been claimed for
Mariah Carey, but that was hype or a hoax. Having read that, I think I
remember previously reading a claim of five octaves for M.C. Is the latter,
perhaps, legit?
Mary P. doubts that humans can hear seven octaves of differing pitches.
Well, yes, they can --- those with normal hearing. A common piano has a
compass of 7 and 1/4 octaves. With the bass notes, one might hear more
overtones than fundamental, but the latter is there. With my several
electronic keyboards, I can play a total of eight octaves of almost pure
sine waves, all of them audible, or nine octaves of sampled piano sound
pushed beyond the span of a wood-and-metal piano. And doing the math:
Those with the full span of "normal" human hearing can hear from 20 to
20,000 Hertz, or oscillations per second, altho' the upper portions are
commonly lost with advancing age. A above middle C is 440 Hz in standard
concert pitch. So, the A four octaves below is an audible 27.5 Hz, and the
one below that is 13.75 Hz, below audibility as a tone, but maybe audible as
discrete pulses. A five octaves above is 14,080 Hz, audible to some of us,
and the next one is 28,160 Hz -- dog-whistle territory, perhaps, or
bat-sonar territory. Ergo, 20 to 20,000 Hz is something like nine and a half
octaves.
Note: Here are the reported upper limits of various kind of sound
reproduction:
Good quality phonograph records, open-reel tape and CDs: 20,000 Hz
Best available cassette tapes: 15,000 Hz.
FM radio broadcasts: 13,000 Hz
AM radio broadcasts: 8,000 Hz.
The first CDs digitally sampled at, I think, 44.1 kHz (44,100 Hz),
meaning that there would be slightly more than two samples of each
oscillation of a 20 kHz tone --- that's why upper frequencies are distorted.
Cassette tape only has one-eighth the room of a 1/4-inch tape running at
7-1/2 inches per second. FM and AM broadcasts are limited to the listed
bandwidth so that the signal doesn't splatter into the adjacent channel; if
the channels were spaced farther apart, the full audio spectrum is capable
of being broadcast by the existing technology.
But I digress!
Tim Spong
Dover, Del., U.S.A.
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