system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Do all the instruments/speakers that we hear produce sound that can't be heard by us?
gpt
Basically whenever you have a resonance somewhere, you have overtones, which are harmonic oscillations at a higher frequency. So when you strike a string tuned to 1kHz, you will also have frequencies at 2kHz, 3kHz, 4kHz and so on and so forth. This is a large part of what makes up the characteristic sound of instruments. The volume of each overtone is typically lower the further away from the fundamental frequency it is, but in theory will always go all the way to frequencies which we can't hear.

Besides music instruments, you will have these oscillations on any moving part. The membrane of a speaker also oscillates, and it'll also have upper tones beyond what we can hear, even if it's a subwoofer.

So yes, they will. It may just be so low that you'll have a hard time measuring it.