Outer limits

This chapter is about the 'lower / upper limit' settings in the SideBar, found under the 'Misc' section.

These settings allow one to configure an overall range that the training in general will be concerned with.

It's not so much about what you want to train (we will talk about ways to focus on certain frequencies later), but rather about outer limits of what you actually can train. It means that most likely there's a lower limit to what your headphones or speakers can properly amplify and make you perceive. But there's also very likely an upper limit to what you can hear right now, be it due to hardware limitations, age or environment related hearing degregation, etc.

Initially we suggest to simply stick with the default range: 50 hz to 16 kHz.

What if this doesn't fit my actual range I perceive?

There are two rough scenarios this can go:

a) the range is too wide:

be it you can't reliabliy perceive the low and/or high end
when it comes to your training with EQdrill, you might eventually notice having particular difficulty with the most outer frequency areas, almost as if it seems kinda pure guessing on your end when it comes to the accuracy of your answers for those frequencies (i.e. "most outer snap points")
in this case you could consider narrowing the 'lower / upper limit' accordingly

b) the range is too narrow:

one could argue you are then not really training outer ends of your perceivable frequency range
at this point it's about concluding for yourself just how far into the low and high end you want to go for sake of ear training
for the low end 50 Hz might be plenty already, you might conclude that far down you tend to rely increasingly more on frequency analyzers to make a sound judegment in practice
for the high end you might consider pushing further up assuming you can reliably hear it
though you might also conclude that in practice it's usually much more applying shelfing filters at the very top end and not so much about small cuts and boosts

Maybe you already have a good idea about your hearing / perception range. If not, a pragmatic way to find it out for your specific listening environment can be the following:

start a DAW at hand
load a simple synth plugin, a tone generator, something that allows you to create a pure sinus signal and alter it's frequency
load up some kind of frequency analyzer if the synth plugin doesn't show you the exact output frequency
then, using an adequate volume level:

warning
Make sure not to go too high in volume for this. Certainly nothing that would damage your speakers or your own hearing! Just a moderate level that can be perceived by yourself.
- sweep somewhat slowly towards the lower end, then the upper end of the frequency range
- for both cases, pay attention when you can no longer perceive the sinus signal that well
- it can help to toggle the whole signal mute at times to see if you can at least perceive something coming in and going away

In case you've never done such a test and feel down after realizing you can't really perceive e.g. 19 kHz at all, well, don't worry, music certainly isn't shaped or perceived predominantly at 19 kHz. Furthermore, frequency analyzers exist and can be a great aid esp. for checking those outer ranges when practially working on music.

Anyway, if in doubt, choose slightly further out limits. If it's too far out, you will get some pretty clear training feedback over time that something is up with those outer areas. Whatever the result, it's about finding your own perception range for optimal ear training, so you get the most out of it.

For sake of this documentation we'll assume the default range: 50 Hz to 16k Hz. But feel free to use your own, you will still be able to follow along (just the number of snap points enabled at times compared to this documentation's images might look differently; i.e. you might have less or more snap points on the outer ends for a given difficulty).