Definition
Plain language
A count of how many times something repeats each second — used here to describe how high or low a sound is.
As stated in the literature
SI unit of frequency (cycles per second); in speech work it indexes fundamental frequency and filter cutoffs, e.g. a 300 Hz low-pass that removes intelligible speech content.
Also called: Hz
Why it matters: It gives everyone a shared unit for talking about pitch and for saying precisely which parts of a sound a filter keeps or removes.
For example, a typical adult speaking voice vibrates a few hundred times per second, so its pitch is described as being a couple hundred hertz.
Heard on the show
“Third: the transcript stays the same, but the audio is low-pass filtered at three hundred hertz.”Episode 262 — Raise the Pitch Nine Percent and the Model Cries Sarcasm