why do filters only reach 16khz? Why not 20khz?

[MassAphekt]

thisll be the last time i say this, it wasnt for BASSES it was for ALL SOUNDS. Ill slap a filter on pretty much anything and I can already notice it's head or dare i say "lovely bright hair" chopped off

[Brian Oblivion]

you on audacity create a tone, set the freq to 20khz and you can just hear it

just chop off everything over 16k on most sounds and youll get a better high end for it.

care to explain your logic here, chief? I LOVE HF, but I've never made a tune where the 15k+ came close to limiting headroom. Maybe that's not what you're talkin about though. I can't imagine the sound itself would be problematic unless you're running some crazy synth/filter resonance!

no you are right, stuff up there doesnt effect your headroom at all, not unless something has gone catastrophically wrong

Im talking about making your tune sound like its got a crisp high end. Its like the low end, you cut bass out of almost all the sounds because you want a loud, full, clear low end, its the same with the top end to some extent. If you just let everything and its mother creep up beyond 13/14k with any meaningful amount of sound youll just get washy blur up there, when you get towards the limits of the ear at either end of the spectrum you cant make out 4 different sounds existing in the same space like you can down at 600hz. If you got 1 sub sound punching in and out of a gap in that frequency you will feel it, if you got low end of 4 pads, the bass, the drums and some fx all bleeding constant drone sounds down to 30hz it will just be a distorted mess down there, you are going to wonder why your tunes bass doesnt punch like a proper track and simply finding ways to put more bass into the mixdown will just keep taking you backwards. With the tops if you cut back on everything apart from some high hats and/or percussion then your tune will sound like its got a cleaner, brighter top end than leaving every sound in the mix to creep up over the top of the scale if it can manage it. Maybe you cut the tops off the reverbs, maybe you only let the reverbs up that far and cut back on other bits, its not really good to put rules on things but if youve never worked like that give it a go, maybe it works for you maybe it doesnt. Were not talking hard cuts here, one 12 or 24db lp filter just to ease it down, let something rhythmic with a strong top end dominate the area.

You all know the sound, when you play some random guys soundcloud or maybe even your own tunes and they just have this washy, sssshhhhhhssyy, foggy blanket of high end that stops you really picking out the snap of the percussive sounds and generally blurs the depth of the music.

[jrisreal]

thisll be the last time i say this, it wasnt for BASSES it was for ALL SOUNDS. Ill slap a filter on pretty much anything and I can already notice it's head or dare i say "lovely bright hair" chopped off

Well then consider my earlier suggestion. New filter or boost with a high shelf to get your 16+ back.

[drake89]

thisll be the last time i say this, it wasnt for BASSES it was for ALL SOUNDS. Ill slap a filter on pretty much anything and I can already notice it's head or dare i say "lovely bright hair" chopped off

Well then consider my earlier suggestion. New filter or boost with a high shelf to get your 16+ back.

That's called working ass backwards. dumb.

you on audacity create a tone, set the freq to 20khz and you can just hear it

just chop off everything over 16k on most sounds and youll get a better high end for it.

care to explain your logic here, chief? I LOVE HF, but I've never made a tune where the 15k+ came close to limiting headroom. Maybe that's not what you're talkin about though. I can't imagine the sound itself would be problematic unless you're running some crazy synth/filter resonance!

no you are right, stuff up there doesnt effect your headroom at all, not unless something has gone catastrophically wrong


You all know the sound, when you play some random guys soundcloud or maybe even your own tunes and they just have this washy, sssshhhhhhssyy, foggy blanket of high end that stops you really picking out the snap of the percussive sounds and generally blurs the depth of the music.

yeah point taken, I guess it could sound washy if you've got a lot of percussion. But I wouldn't call the 15k+ range snap so much as 'air' or 'sizzle' maybe. I'd call the snap more in the 2-5k range, but that's a huuuge rabbit hole better left to professional mixers.

[jrisreal]

Got a better suggestion, drake? If so, please share.

[JTMMusicuk]

yeah the only thing to do really is find a new filter, i dont think using an eq to bring up the high end is a good idea though cos it might cause some phasing problems

[jrisreal]

Agreed. That's why i suggested to get a new filter first.

[JTMMusicuk]

Agreed. That's why i suggested to get a new filter first.

In hindsight the thread should have just ended there

[Brian Oblivion]

thisll be the last time i say this, it wasnt for BASSES it was for ALL SOUNDS. Ill slap a filter on pretty much anything and I can already notice it's head or dare i say "lovely bright hair" chopped off

Well then consider my earlier suggestion. New filter or boost with a high shelf to get your 16+ back.

That's called working ass backwards. dumb.

you on audacity create a tone, set the freq to 20khz and you can just hear it

just chop off everything over 16k on most sounds and youll get a better high end for it.

care to explain your logic here, chief? I LOVE HF, but I've never made a tune where the 15k+ came close to limiting headroom. Maybe that's not what you're talkin about though. I can't imagine the sound itself would be problematic unless you're running some crazy synth/filter resonance!

no you are right, stuff up there doesnt effect your headroom at all, not unless something has gone catastrophically wrong


You all know the sound, when you play some random guys soundcloud or maybe even your own tunes and they just have this washy, sssshhhhhhssyy, foggy blanket of high end that stops you really picking out the snap of the percussive sounds and generally blurs the depth of the music.

yeah point taken, I guess it could sound washy if you've got a lot of percussion. But I wouldn't call the 15k+ range snap so much as 'air' or 'sizzle' maybe. I'd call the snap more in the 2-5k range, but that's a huuuge rabbit hole better left to professional mixers.

yeah theres no snap at +15k, its all air but a clean high end helps your ear pick out the transients in the music and identify where the snap is, again its like a clean sub end will let you feel the force and thickness of the bass, the thick low end is really about the 100 to 300hz area but if youve got a cloudy sub below it youre going to lose the over all definition of the bass.

[StratosFear]

human hearing averages at 20hz - 20khz and its been proven that even frequencys above 20khz affects our perception of the audible sound, it may not be musical as such but it deffintly enhances what we hear

This is a common myth - as far as i'm aware no scientific evidence proves that we can hear outside of the normal hearing range. If you have any links to any credible studies, i'd be interested to read them.

Digital audio at 44.1khz can only reproduce up to 22khz and mp3 will often be less, so there simply isn't any information up there.

Wait, what? Are you saying that because something isn't reproduced fully, it wasn't there in the first place? I don't think that makes sense .

Also, what about brown noise? The whole Mythbusters segment. You can't actually "hear" the noise, but you can definitely feel it.

EDIT: Didn't realize there were two more pages to the thread...I'm stupid

[JTMMusicuk]

I dont think the brown note counts..thats your body reacting to the frequency..i guess you can feel that though haha

[VirtualMark]

Wait, what? Are you saying that because something isn't reproduced fully, it wasn't there in the first place? I don't think that makes sense .

Also, what about brown noise? The whole Mythbusters segment. You can't actually "hear" the noise, but you can definitely feel it.

EDIT: Didn't realize there were two more pages to the thread...I'm stupid

I just meant that with most music we listen to - cds and mp3s - won't have anything over 22khz as that's the upper limit.

Yeah i think you mean the mythical 'brown note' as opposed to brown noise. Brown noise is like pink noise but with even more bass. The brown notes a myth but what you're thinking of is infrasonic - sound too low to hear, but you can feel it through vibration.

[mthrfnk]

Fuck all this bullshit arguing, OP I use this filter, it goes above the 16kHz limit http://www.fxpansion.com/index.php?page=172 it's the shit imo.

Alternatively you could automate an EQ sweep since your DAWs EQ will go upto 20kHz

[skimpi]

The standard logic filters I use go up to 20khz lol, why the fuck wouldnt a filter go that high?

Also, talking about high frequencies that you cant hear, I think the point is when JT was saying that you can feel it, is that you cant sense that tone, as its too high, there isnt a 'magic organ' that can enable you to hear that high, but the frequencies up there do affect the frequencies that you can hear. Now I know that standard speakers cant go up very high, but as you are saying that most humans cant hear much above like 18Khz, the speakers can still produce those frequencies. So they are still being output by the same tweeter driver as the 15Khz frequencies, so its going to affect it in some way.

[Soulstep]

The standard logic filters I use go up to 20khz lol, why the fuck wouldnt a filter go that high

so do fab-filter, to me everything over 16khz sounds harsh especially at raves.

[mthrfnk]

The standard logic filters I use go up to 20khz lol, why the fuck wouldnt a filter go that high?

A couple in FL don't, hence me using an external VST.

[staticcast]

the reason why some filters don't go up as high as 20kHz is that it can be more difficult to design a filter algorithm that remains stable and sounds good as it gets close to the nyquist frequency (half the sample rate).

solution: get a better filter plugin, or increase the samplerate.

no, humans can't hear much above 20k. yes, filters that go up to 20k are necessary and useful. (no, not for wobble bass.)

[jrisreal]

the reason why some filters don't go up as high as 20kHz is that it can be more difficult to design a filter algorithm that remains stable and sounds good as it gets close to the nyquist frequency (half the sample rate).

solution: get a better filter plugin, or increase the samplerate.

no, humans can't hear much above 20k. yes, filters that go up to 20k are necessary and useful. (no, not for wobble bass.)

If you increase the sample rate, how would the filter know? Like your username btw

[VirtualMark]

Damn, i bet people like Noisia wish they'd had the knowledge that's been shared in this thread, their tunes would have been so much more rich in the 16khz-20khz area. All these ignorant artists that have been using inferior filters all these years.. their tunes must suck so much.

[Neuro Fiend]

yeah the only thing to do really is find a new filter, i dont think using an eq to bring up the high end is a good idea though cos it might cause some phasing problems

I'm confused by what you mean... Boosting high end wouldn't really cause phasing problems, yeah EQs put some phase to the boosted area but it is in no way a problem in the case of adding some high end on a bass sound or snare drum for example. The main problem with this would be trying to boost frequencies which have been removed (or there abouts) as the content isn't there so it just won't sound good.

OP you could try any of the following filters:

tone2 bi-filter
fabfilter volcano
vengeance sound philta
ohmforce quad fromage


If you own reaktor there are also countless types of filters that come with that and even more on the user library.