Hearing threshold for pure tones above 20 kHz

Abstract

Hearing thresholds for pure tones from 2 kHz to 28 kHz were measured. A 2AFC procedure combined with a 3-down 1-up transformed up-down method was employed to obtain threshold values that were less affected by listener’s criterion of judgment. From some listeners, threshold values of 88 dB SPL or higher were obtained for a tone at 24 kHz, whereas thresholds could not be obtained from all participants at 26 kHz and above. Furthermore, thresholds were also measured under masking by a noise low-pass filtered at 20 kHz. At frequencies above 20 kHz, the difference of threshold values between with and without the masking noise was a few decibels, indicating that the tone detection was not affected by subharmonic components that might have appeared in the lower frequency regions. The results of measurement also showed that the threshold increased rather gradually for tones from 20 to 24 kHz whereas it increased sharply from 14 to 20 kHz.