thinQmaster Virtual testing partner Adaptive practice exams that find your weak spots and drill them. Every answer explained. From $69
Enroll

thinQmaster

Find your exam

Five questions free, before you decide.

Step 1 · choose a vendor

In one of our camps? Your practice exams come with the tuition — they are on your study page already.

Collaboration, Voice & AV · Foundational

Frequency Response

The range of frequencies a device reproduces and how evenly, usually stated as a range with a tolerance in dB.

Definition

A specification such as 20 Hz to 20 kHz plus or minus 3 dB describes both the bandwidth and the flatness. Human hearing nominally spans 20 Hz to 20 kHz, while speech intelligibility depends most on roughly 500 Hz to 4 kHz. Microphones, loudspeakers and rooms each shape the overall system response.

Example

A ceiling loudspeaker rated 80 Hz to 18 kHz plus or minus 3 dB will reproduce speech well but little deep bass.

Exam tip

A response range without a tolerance figure is incomplete.

Related terms