We use the term “higher” to describe notes of smaller wavelengths, and this term seems strangely fitting in a way that I don’t quite understand. For example, when a band is playing heavy bass notes and then a singer comes in with treble notes, it seems like the vocal notes are actually physically *higher* (like, in the room or in my ears) than the bass notes.
Is this a real thing? Or am I just imagining it? Or is it just subconscious association with the words “high” and “low” which we use to describe these notes? Or maybe I’m just noticing that speakers and venues usually put the woofers on the bottom and the tweeters on the top?
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You know how the deeper you go into the ocean the bluer things seem? That’s because blue light penetrates things like water and glass better than red light. The frequency/color of the light has slightly different properties.
Same with sound frequencies. Higher sound frequencies tend to bounce better than lower sound frequencies. Lower sound frequencies are a bit more “bendy” than higher ones which is why you will often hear lower frequencies that are far away than higher ones.
You know how bats use echolocation to know where they are? They use the higher frequency sounds because they tend to reflect more accurately instead of bending around objects.
The difference in the properties of these frequencies are what we perceive as “higher”. They are more directional so you will be able to pinpoint where they are in space a little bit better.
However the frequency difference between a human voice and a cello is not that different. If you are perceiving higher toned things as physically separate in a location and not just coming directly from a particular speaker driver/tweeter/woofer, it is more likely that the audio system you are listening to has a good soundstage that comes from well-synced recording reproduction. Google ‘speaker soundstage’ for the psychoacoustics of that.
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