Understanding Octaves in Audiovisual Perspective
Before diving into the definition of octaves, let’s start with a fun fact: humans can hear sounds ranging from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz! That’s like having a superpower, right? But here’s the catch: no single speaker's driver can cover this entire range. So, in the professional audiovisual (AV) world, we divide audio into three main clusters: low frequency (bass), mid frequency, and high frequency (treble). This division works great for designing audio systems. But when it comes to music production, things get a bit more interesting.
The AV Professional divided the hearing range into inly three clusters: Low, mid, and high
In the music world, the hearing range is divided into ten parts, each called an octave. Think of an octave as a way to slice up the human hearing range (the 20-20K Hz will divided into ten parts rather than three). But why do we need this? Musical instruments can produce a wide range of frequencies, and both instruments and vocalists need to be in the same frequency range to avoid sounding like a mess such as music undesired out of tune and singer sound distortion. To keep everything in harmony, musicians divide the hearing range into ten octaves. But wait, there’s more! Each octave is further divided into eight keys, named after the musical notes (do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do). These keys are represented by the white keys on a piano, with each set of eight keys starting from C representing one octave. And the second octave is the following eight keys and so on.
In the music production clustering the same range into ten part each part called OCTAVE
Now, let’s talk about why octaves are important in professional AV design. Any system must ultimately produce sound that is understandable to the end user. In this case, musicians are the end users, and we need to speak their language to deliver the best system for them. Additionally, in acoustic design applications like EASE FOCUS, it’s crucial to monitor each frequency group in a space. Using the existing definition of octaves helps in monitoring frequency distribution effectively.
The White KEY of the Piano represent the Octave KEY
As engineers, we love numbers. So, here’s a cool formula for each octave frequency range: the first octave starts at 22 Hz and ends at 44 Hz, the second octave starts at 44 Hz and ends at 88 Hz, and so on. The formula is:
Octave(n) frequency=Octave(n−1)×2
. Each end of the period for a certain octave is double the start of that period. This concept is similar to the definition of Total Harmonic Distortion (THD), which we can discuss in future articles.
In conclusion, in the AV industry, we use the definition of octaves to deliver the best acoustic distribution in a space and to install systems that meet the end user’s needs. For musicians, octaves are a way to communicate and ensure harmony without undesired distortion. Octaves provide musicians with countless ways to play with frequencies and create different songs. Otherwise, a piano would only have three keys: low, mid, and high. How boring would that be?