Re: Why is high high?

["James W. Beauchamp" <jwb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

We not only think of high pitches as being higher, but in the case of speakers
we tend to place the high frequency units higher and the low frequency units
lower. High frequencies tend to travel in straight paths, and we don't want
anything to get in their way, so we put their transducers at ear level. Low
frequencies, on the other hand, are much more unidirectional and seem to
hug the floor and walls, so we tend to place them low, sometimes even on
the floor ( e. g., the sub-woofer). This might have something to do with
our current high-low pitch nomenclature.

Can you imagine a situation where the high frequencies would be coming out
of the floor and the base frequencies out of the ceiling? Wouldn't this
seem strange? Wouldn't the reverse situation seem more natural?

Jim Beauchamp

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