We use the term "sense" for more than just our five physical senses. We use the word to describe a "feeling" (also not technically a physical feeling... gosh this is hard.) at times, and sometimes even just a premonition.
My example: fear. We say cats can "sense" fear, or that we have an overdeveloped "sense" of fear.
Well..... What if we actually, literally had a fear sense?
Alright, I suppose I mean more of a "danger sense" more than a "fear sense". Almost like Spiderman, I guess, only much less "omniscient." The real-life danger sense could be fooled by a roller coaster, for instance.
... otherwise roller coasters wouldn't be fun anymore. :P
Anyway, while I was researching this potential idea, I came across an article that said that extremely low-frequency notes (lower than the human ear can hear) can bring on feelings of intense terror in people subjected to them.
I was hooked. The human ear hears all the way down to 20hz. After using a noise generator to create a series of 15hz, 18hz, and 20hz notes, I powered up my Pioneers and let the music roar. I ran them through my home speaker system (pic 1) and my computer speaker subwoofer (pic 2) and waited to be terrified.
Alas, no such terrible feelings happened. I pulled out the owner's manuals and discovered to my disappointment that neither speaker set has the frequency response to pull off notes any lower than about 20hz, because quite simply, why would a speaker designed to be heard by humans create sounds any lower than the human could hear?
This was disappointing. I'm currently looking into speakers with lower frequency response, but no luck so far.
If I do find a cheap speaker system capable of playing lower notes, I'll be sure to post my experiments and experiences with it.
~TomBob
Pic 1: home speaker system (I have a pair of speakers)
Pic 2: computer speaker subwoofer.
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