How does a person distinguish loudness for a highfrequency t

How does a person distinguish loudness for a high-frequency tone?

Solution

Pitch and loudness are both characteristics of sound. When things vibrate they send out sound waves. Sound waves like any wave have frequency and amplitude.

One can imagine seeing the sea waves on the seashore. We can see these waves being huge farther away and they become less and less in height as they reach the shores. This height of the waves is what we call thier amplitude. Sound waves too come in varying amplitude and this amplitude is what renders them the loudness that we perceive.

Also, just like there can be many waves reaching the shore within a given time period, at times, the number of waves reaching the shore can be seen to subside. This number of waves reaching the shore is referred to as frequency. Sound waves too have a frequency. The number of sound waves that pass through a given point in one second is the frequency of that sound. This frequency is what imparts the pitch to the sound.

A high frequency tone will have a high number of waves passing through a given point per unit second. If this number of waves be kept the same and the amplitude of the wave be increased, the loudness increases while maintaining the high frequency of the tone.

The piano or electronic synthesizer is the finest instrument to demonstrate this. It has got keys with different pitch. One can hear a sound and measure the pitch of it by pressing the key which best matches ot that sound. This way one can match sounds with all types of frequencies, even a sound with a high-frequency. Once he or she matches this pitch, if the volume of the synthesizer is increased at various levels, the same sound, at the same high-frequency, can be heard at different levels of loudness. This is how a person can distinguish loudness for a high-frequency pitch.