system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Can sounds at a frequency humans cannot hear, cover sounds we can hear?

If sound is produced by vibrations of air, could a loud enough ultra or infrasonic sound overpower the vibrations from other sounds and cause us to hear nothing?
gpt
Kind of.

Here's the thing, it's possible to hear sounds above the human hearing range (20 Hz ~ 20 kHz) through bone conduction. That is, you skip the ear (because the middle ear won't transmit ultrasound), and go straight through the bones to the cochlea. Ultrasound that is perceived this way can, in fact, mask normal air transmitted sound in the range from 10 kHz to 14 kHz. However, it wouldn't be fair to say that it's being masked by a frequency you can't hear, because you would hear that sound, it's just not a sound you would hear under normal circumstances.

On the other end of the spectrum, infrasound can also be heard under certain conditions. Essentially, if ultrasound is loud enough, it will cause harmonics from distortion of the middle ear that can be perceived as a sort of "chugging" sound. These harmonics would be perceived in the low frequency (20-100 Hz) range, and could potentially mask sounds in that range. Yet again, however, you would be hearing something in this range.