The five frequency bands
Sub-bass
20 - 60 HzCharacter: Felt as much as heard - rumble, weight, physical pressure.
What lives here: Kick drum fundamentals, 808s, pipe organ pedals, film LFE effects.
EQ notes: Too much: muddy, boomy playback that overwhelms small rooms. Too little: music feels thin on capable systems. Most laptop and phone speakers reproduce none of it.
Bass
60 - 250 HzCharacter: The foundation - fullness, warmth, groove.
What lives here: Bass guitar (E1 = 41 Hz fundamental, but most energy 60-200 Hz), kick drum body, cello, left hand of the piano, male vocal fundamentals.
EQ notes: Boost around 60-100 Hz for weight; cut around 200-250 Hz to reduce mud. Room modes live here - test with a sine sweep before blaming your speakers.
Midrange
250 Hz - 2 kHzCharacter: Where music lives - melody, body, intelligibility.
What lives here: Nearly every instrument's fundamentals and lower harmonics: guitar, violin, brass, snare body, and the core of the human voice (fundamentals ~85-255 Hz, vowel formants 300 Hz-2 kHz).
EQ notes: The most dangerous band to EQ - small changes are very audible. Boxiness lives around 300-500 Hz; honk around 800 Hz-1 kHz.
Presence
2 - 6 kHzCharacter: Attack, clarity, edge - the ear's most sensitive region.
What lives here: Consonants in speech, guitar pick attack, snare crack, vocal presence.
EQ notes: Boost for intelligibility and cut-through; excess causes listening fatigue and harshness faster than any other band. Hearing damage from noise exposure typically notches in around 4 kHz.
Brilliance / Air
6 - 20 kHzCharacter: Sparkle, shimmer, sense of space.
What lives here: Cymbal shimmer, string harmonics, breath sounds, room ambience.
EQ notes: Gentle boosts add polish ("air EQ" around 12-16 kHz); excess causes sibilance. The top octave fades with age - most adults over 40 hear little above 15 kHz.
Hearing is logarithmic
The ear judges pitch by ratios, not differences: every doubling of frequency is one octave, the same perceptual step whether it is 55→110 Hz or 5,000→10,000 Hz. That means the entire "brilliance" band (6-20 kHz) spans under two octaves, while 20-250 Hz - which looks tiny on a linear scale - covers more than three and a half.
Loudness perception varies with frequency too. Sensitivity peaks between roughly 1 and 4 kHz (which is why the 1 kHz reference tone anchors level measurement) and falls off steeply toward the lows - a 40 Hz tone must be dramatically more powerful than a 1 kHz tone to sound equally loud. Equal-loudness contours are why quiet music seems to lose its bass, and why "loudness" buttons exist.
Hear the log scale for yourself: run an exponential sweep from 20 Hz to 20 kHz - it spends equal time per octave and sounds like a smooth, even rise. A linear sweep by contrast races through all the musically important low octaves in the first seconds.
Below 20 Hz and above 20 kHz
Infrasound (below 20 Hz) is felt rather than heard - large HVAC systems, distant thunder, and earthquakes produce it. Test how low your system genuinely reaches with our subwoofer test, which sweeps down to 1 Hz.
Ultrasound (above 20 kHz) is the realm of bat echolocation, dog whistles (~23-54 kHz), and medical imaging. Just below it sits the territory of the mosquito tone (15-20 kHz) - audible to teenagers, invisible to most adults, which is exactly what makes it a fun test of hearing age alongside our hearing test.
Frequency FAQ
What frequency range can humans hear?
Nominally 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz, but the top end declines steadily with age: children may hear to 20 kHz, most adults over 40 top out near 14-15 kHz, and over 60 commonly around 10-12 kHz. The low end stays fairly stable across life. Test your own ceiling with an online hearing test.
What frequency is bass?
Bass conventionally spans roughly 60-250 Hz, with sub-bass covering 20-60 Hz below it. A bass guitar's lowest string sounds at 41 Hz, but most of what you perceive as "bass" in a mix is energy between 60 and 150 Hz.
Why does my voice sound different in each frequency band?
Speech spreads across bands: vocal fundamentals sit at roughly 85-180 Hz (male) and 165-255 Hz (female), the vowel formants that carry identity live around 300 Hz-2 kHz, and the consonants that carry intelligibility live around 2-6 kHz. Cut the presence band and speech turns muffled even though the voice "tone" is untouched.
What frequencies should I use to test speakers?
A practical set: 40 Hz (sub-bass reach), 80 Hz (bass weight), 250 Hz (mud check), 1 kHz (reference level), 4 kHz (presence), 10 kHz (treble), 15 kHz (air). Play each as a sine wave at equal volume and listen for dropouts, buzzing, or harshness - or run a continuous sweep to catch problems between spot frequencies.
What is the difference between frequency and pitch?
Frequency is the physical measurement (vibrations per second, in Hz); pitch is how the ear perceives it. The mapping is logarithmic: each octave doubles the frequency, so the ear hears 100→200 Hz and 5,000→10,000 Hz as the same-sized step. That is why EQ and frequency charts use log scales.