Question

If you knew that the six-octave range of human speech was in the mid-frequency range of 125 to 8000 Hz, and if you knew that the range of human hearing extended from the low frequency of 16 Hz to the high frequency of about 20,000, could you guess the range of octaves we can hear?

Answer

We can hear a range of a little over 10 octaves. Each doubling of the frequency is one octave. Thus, within the range of speech, 125 Hz to 250 Hz is one octave, 250 to 500 is a second octave, 500 to 1000 is the third, and so on, until the limit of six octaves is reached at 8000 Hz. Within the range of what we can hear, 16Hz to 32 is one octave, 32 to 64 is the second, and so on, up to the upper limit of 20,000.