The Audible Frequency Range (20Hz-20kHz)
The audible frequency range is the span of pitches a human ear can detect, running roughly from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz (20 kHz). It matters more than almost any other number in audio because every EQ move you will ever make happens somewhere inside this window: boosting bass, taming harshness, adding "air" to a vocal — each one is just picking a spot on this scale and turning it up or down. You can hear the whole range in action in a free browser equalizer, where sliding a band up or down is the fastest way to learn what each part of the spectrum actually does.
What 20 Hz to 20 kHz actually means
"Hz" is short for hertz — cycles per second. A sound wave that vibrates the air 100 times a second is 100 Hz; one that vibrates it 10,000 times a second is 10,000 Hz (10 kHz). Low numbers are low, deep pitches; high numbers are bright, treble pitches. A rumbling bass note lives near the bottom of the range, and the crisp "tss" of a cymbal lives near the top.
Two terms sit just outside the range. Frequencies below 20 Hz are infrasonic — you feel them as pressure or vibration in your chest more than you hear them as pitch. Frequencies above 20 kHz are ultrasonic, beyond human hearing entirely, though plenty of animals detect them. Not every sound sits at one spot on the scale, either — brown noise and its siblings white and pink fill the whole range at once, differing only in how their energy tilts across it.
There's an important caveat, though: 20 kHz is the ceiling for a young, healthy ear under ideal conditions. It is not what most people actually hear. By adulthood, most of us top out somewhere around 15–17 kHz, and that upper limit keeps dropping with age. So "20 Hz to 20 kHz" describes the human hearing range as a species, not the range you personally have today. If you want the deeper foundation on what a frequency is in the first place, What Are Audio Frequencies? is the sibling piece to start with.
How much of the range you can actually hear
Your ear is not equally sensitive across the whole range. It is most sensitive in the 2–5 kHz region — largely thanks to the natural resonance of the ear canal — which happens to be right where much of the clarity and consonants of human speech live. Toward both extremes, sub-bass at the bottom and the highest highs at the top, sensitivity falls off, which is why deep bass often has to be physically louder before it registers as loud.
On top of that baseline, hearing changes with age. The gradual, age-related loss of high-frequency hearing is called presbycusis, and it happens to almost everyone. The high end goes first. The table below is a rough, typical picture — real results vary a lot from person to person depending on genetics, noise exposure, and health, so treat these as approximate rather than a test result.
| Age | Typical upper hearing limit (approx.) |
|---|---|
| Teens / 20s | ~17–20 kHz |
| 30s | ~16 kHz |
| 40s | ~14–15 kHz |
| 50s | ~12–14 kHz |
| 60s and up | ~10–12 kHz |
A well-known example of this is the "mosquito tone" — a tone around 17.4 kHz that is mostly audible to people under about 25 and inaudible to many older listeners. It has been used both as a phone ringtone teenagers could hear in class and, less charmingly, as a deterrent tone to discourage loitering. If you can hear it, that tells you something real about your own high-frequency range. To hear where your own range tops out, How to Use an Online Tone Generator shows how to sweep upward safely, at a fixed low volume.
The frequency bands, from sub-bass to air
Audio people carve the range into frequency bands — named regions that make it easier to talk about where a sound sits. This is the EQ frequency chart that most mixing advice is built on:
| Band | Approx. range | What lives there |
|---|---|---|
| Sub-bass | ~20–60 Hz | Felt more than heard — rumble, the deep body of a kick drum or an 808 |
| Bass | ~60–250 Hz | Weight and warmth — bass guitar, the punch of a kick |
| Low-mids | ~250–500 Hz | Body and warmth — but also where "mud" tends to collect |
| Midrange | ~500 Hz – 2 kHz | The core of most instruments and vocals |
| Upper-mids / presence | ~2–6 kHz | Clarity, attack, and vocal intelligibility |
| Brilliance / "air" | ~6 kHz and up | Sparkle, openness, sense of space |
One thing worth saying plainly, because most charts do not: these boundaries are conventions, not hard lines. Different engineers and different sources draw them in slightly different places, and they overlap. There is no physical event at exactly 250 Hz where "bass" becomes "low-mids." The bands are a shared vocabulary for talking about the spectrum, not fixed compartments the sound falls into. Use them as landmarks, not laws.
Two practical notes on that table. The low-mids are where a mix most often goes wrong — when too many instruments pile energy into the 250–500 Hz region, the result is a boxy, congested sound; Why Your Mix Sounds Muddy (and How to Fix It) is the fix for that specifically. And at the other end of the weight scale, if you want more of the sub-bass and bass rows without a full mix, a dedicated bass booster — or the walkthrough in How to Bass Boost a Song (Free, Online) — targets exactly those bottom two bands.
Where the sounds you know actually sit
Numbers mean more once you attach them to real sounds. A few reference anchors:
- Piano. The lowest note on a standard 88-key piano, A0, has a fundamental of 27.5 Hz — right down in the sub-bass. The highest note, C8, is only about 4,186 Hz. That is worth pausing on: the fundamental pitch of every note on a full piano keyboard fits under roughly 4.2 kHz. Everything above that is overtone and shimmer, not fundamental pitch.
- Bass guitar. The open low E string is about 41.2 Hz — squarely in the sub-bass region.
- Speaking voice. The fundamental of an adult male speaking voice typically sits around 85–155 Hz; an adult female speaking voice around 165–255 Hz. That is the fundamental — the voice reaches far higher through its harmonics.
- Vocal presence. The frequencies that help a voice cut through a mix and sound clear and intelligible sit around 2–5 kHz.
- Sibilance. The harsh, hissy part of "s," "t," and "sh" sounds sits higher, around 5–8 kHz — the region you reach for when a vocal sounds spitty.
Those last two are the whole game when you shape a voice. If you want to act on them, How to EQ a Vocal in Your Browser covers finding presence and controlling sibilance step by step.
Why instruments reach far above their lowest note
When an instrument plays a note, the lowest frequency it produces is the fundamental — that is the pitch you name. But stacked above the fundamental is a series of harmonics: frequencies at integer multiples of it (2×, 3×, 4×, and so on). Everything above the fundamental is collectively the overtones, and the specific mix of those harmonics is what gives an instrument its timbre — why a violin and a flute playing the same note sound completely different.
This is why the full range matters even for "low" instruments. That 41 Hz open E on a bass guitar is not a 41 Hz event and nothing else. It puts energy into 82 Hz, 123 Hz, 164 Hz and on up the spectrum. In fact, in a real recording the second harmonic of that note (around 82 Hz) is often louder than the fundamental itself — which is part of why a small phone speaker that can barely reproduce 41 Hz can still convince you it is playing a bass line. The ear reconstructs the missing fundamental from the harmonics it can hear.
If you would like to actually see this — the fundamental and its stack of harmonics laid out visually — What Is a Spectrogram? shows how a single note spreads across the frequency range as bright horizontal bands.
Making it practical
Once you see the whole picture, EQ stops being mysterious. Every EQ decision is the same move: choose a spot inside the 20 Hz–20 kHz window and turn it up or down. Adding warmth is a boost in the bass and low-mids; fixing a muddy mix is a cut in the low-mids; brightening a dull vocal is a lift in the presence or air bands. That is genuinely all an audio equalizer does — it just gives you handles on different parts of this range.
If you want the concept behind those handles rather than the map of the range, What Is EQ (Equalization)? picks up exactly there.
Frequently asked questions
Can humans hear below 20 Hz or above 20 kHz?
Not as pitch, for the most part. Frequencies below 20 Hz are infrasonic — you tend to feel them as vibration or pressure rather than hear a note. Frequencies above 20 kHz are ultrasonic and fall outside human hearing entirely, though many animals detect them. The 20 Hz to 20 kHz figure describes the healthy young-adult range; your personal ceiling, especially at the top, is usually lower.
Why can't I hear high frequencies anymore?
This is almost certainly presbycusis — the normal, age-related loss of high-frequency hearing that affects nearly everyone. The top of your range goes first and keeps dropping over time, so a limit near 20 kHz in your teens might be closer to 14–15 kHz in your 40s. Long-term exposure to loud sound accelerates it. It is typical, not a sign that anything is broken.
What is the most sensitive frequency for human hearing?
The ear is most sensitive in the 2–5 kHz region, largely because of the natural resonance of the ear canal. That range lines up closely with the consonants and clarity that make human speech intelligible, which is part of why speech feels so easy to pick out. Sounds in this region register as louder and clearer at the same physical level than sounds at the extreme low or high ends of the range, which need more energy to seem equally loud.
What frequency is bass and sub-bass?
By common convention, bass sits roughly from 60 to 250 Hz — the weight and warmth of a kick drum or bass guitar — and sub-bass sits below it, from about 20 to 60 Hz, the region you feel in your chest more than hear as a distinct note. These boundaries are conventions that overlap and vary between engineers, not exact scientific cutoffs, so treat them as landmarks rather than precise lines.
Do I need to hear 20 kHz to mix well?
No. Most working audio engineers cannot hear all the way to 20 kHz, because normal age-related loss trims the top of everyone's range. What matters far more is knowing where sounds sit and making consistent, informed decisions — and comparing your work to references. Plenty of great mixes are made by people whose hearing tops out around 15–16 kHz. Understanding the range beats hearing every last hertz of it.