Sine sweep

bitflipper
How much musical information exists down there in the first place is another topic for discussion. Yes, the fundamental frequency of the low E string on a bass is 41.2 Hz

Just what exactly are you implying about us bass players here? 

Listening on an old pair of Beats (by Dre) at work, and it completely dropped off at 19 Hz (the tone started to vibrate around 26-27 Hz).  

drewfx1

bitflipper
How much musical information exists down there in the first place is another topic for discussion. Yes, the fundamental frequency of the low E string on a bass is 41.2 Hz

Just what exactly are you implying about us bass players here? 

That we can't play after we hit 42 years old? Nahhhh ... can't be right!

The test in the OP is a little deceiving, because it's a constant amplitude all the way down. That doesn't happen in music productions because the characteristics of human hearing require you to favor the low end.
 
Another potential problem is that your speakers may start to distort, and when that happens you think you're hearing 40 Hz when in fact it's the third harmonic you're hearing. Play back the test at a low-enough volume to avoid harmonic distortion.
 

What I "thought" I heard: tone down to the high 40s, then more of a slight rumble from mid 40s down to about 37 Hz, then nada.
 
Edit: And I thought I heard a dip in volume around the crossover frequency of my monitors. Gotta check that!

With this kind of test, you have to take what you hear with a grain of salt. Some of the variances you hear are the result of room resonances, not anomalies in your speakers' frequency response.
 
If I boost the low end like I might in a recording, my subs are clearly capable of reproducing 30 Hz (the lowest I've ever tested). But to hear 30 Hz as loud as 1,000 Hz it has to be 10,000 times louder. At that point, everything in the room is vibrating!

BobF

drewfx1

Can you go ahead and do the math for a few examples for us slow types?

 
Soitenly:
 
The lines show how loud frequencies have to be to sound equally loud to us as 1kHz does at the number listed for each line. IOW, it's basically the frequency response of our hearing. There are different curves because at different SPL levels the sensitivity of our ears to different frequencies changes. The unit used for equal loudness contours is called a "phon" which calibrates the listening level in dB SPL to 1kHz, so 80 phon basically means something like "frequency response so that all frequencies sound as loud to us as 1kHz does at 80 dB SPL". 
 
The line at the bottom shows the threshold of our hearing at different frequencies - you will sometimes see the abbreviation "ATH" which stands for Absolute Threshold of Hearing.
 
So lets say we are listening to that 1kHz at 80 dB SPL, we look at the 80 phon line - it shows that 30Hz needs to be 110 dB SPL to sound equally loud to us.
 
Since 110 - 80 = 30, the 30Hz needs to be 30dB louder. Since a dB is a logarithmic expression of a ratio, we can do a little math to convert it to a ratio and see whether "it's only about 1,000".
 
The formula is:
10 to the (dB's/20)th power = ratio
so
10 to the (30/20)th power = 10 ^ 1.5 = ~31.62
 
So at 80 phon, a 30Hz tone has to be ~31.62 times as loud to sound as loud as 1kHz.
 
 
 
 
And I didn't spell it all out in the first place because I figured Dave would get the joke. 

sharke
I can hear it down to about 23-24Hz on my ATH-M50's. 

Nice