Reality check on upper limit of human hearing.

[kbx]

I turned 72 a few month's back and I knew my hearing was deteriorating because I found it increasingly difficult to hear what people were saying in the face of background noise and TV actors seemed to do nothing but mumble. I knew when listening to music in my workshop that the HF response of my left ear was a lot better than the right just by turning my head. In the end I bit the bullet and got my hearing tested. I was gobsmacked to learn my ears are nearly 20dB down at 8KHz (they don't measure above that). Long story short I got some hearing aids and it is truly amazing to hear (almost) normally again. The hearing aids I have can be set to one of four configurations. The two most important are regular speech which flattens the response up to 8KHz and the music one that goes higher (they don't say how high). Hi hats, tambourines and maracas are a real treat nowadays.

Cheers

Ian

This is an interesting video explaining why it actually IS harder to make out dialogue in movies and on TV now...

 

[JohnRoberts]

I noticed a dolby dialog enhancement option in my newer Roku box... I haven't tried it but routinely leave captions turned on.

JR

 

[Ricardus]

My dad bought a new TV many years ago and the Stereo Enhancement feature was turned on by default. I didn't know this, but found hearing dialogue in films that I rented very hard to hear. No one else seemed to have a problem with it but it was very pronounced (no pun). I looked through the TVs controls and turned off the stereo enhancement and suddenly I could hear the voices.

Some sort of weird phase stuff (whatever phase games they were playing to make the stereo image sound wider) combined (I guess??) with the atypical brain wiring I have from aspergers was just making the voices cancel or something.

But when I turned the "feature" off I was fine.

 

[living sounds]

Here’s another note on the way things sound (to me) when electric cars first started to gain traction (excuse the pun) I nearly walked in front of one a number of times, and for for quite a while too. I said to my partner on more than one occasion “damn these Prius(es?) are so damned quiet I could easily walk out or cycle in front of it without realising”
Recently I noticed I wasn’t doing this anymore, I live in central london and every other car is electric these days, what I realised was this, that electric cars are not silent, they make their own noise, but it was a noise my brain chose to filter out because it wasn’t associated with danger to me, but now it is, so I react to it. So maybe when you think you can’t hear high frequencies, maybe when you think you don’t hear 16k sine wave, maybe you do? Maybe you just don’t know that this is what a 16k sine wave sounds like, maybe your brain is yet to log it because it’s not important to your day to day survival.

I do think electric cars are required to generate artificial noise these days at low speeds in many jurisdictions, precisely because pedestrians/cyclists not hearing them is a hazard.

 

[JohnRoberts]

I believe it has been law since around 2019 that new EVs will make artificial sounds below 18 mph to reduce pedestrian collisions.

JR

 

[zamproject]

Some sort of weird phase stuff (whatever phase games they were playing to make the stereo image sound wider) combined (I guess??) with the atypical brain wiring I have from aspergers was just making the voices cancel or something.

Yes, basic stereo wildener use LR crosstalk phased signal, which result in partial nulling at center...as voices are usually mixed center, it may be an issue. No need for atypical brain wiring to perceive that

My console stereo modules have -stereo spread- knob, seldom use and very carefully for this exact reason past the 1 mark (standard LR) but more often from 0 to 1, which narrow the stereo (0 is mono LR sum)

 

[Ricardus]

Yes, basic stereo wildener use LR crosstalk phased signal, which result in partial nulling at center...as voices are usually mixed center, it may be an issue. No need for atypical brain wiring to perceive that

Except no one else the the issue I was having.

 

[zamproject]

Maybe you where in the stereo image hotspot? and/or the others had less efficient ear than your trained ones to catch a few dB drop/null ?

 

[JShaffer]

At 40, doing ok to about 20k here but with a few upper mid dips like many others purport to have sustained. I'm certain most of my little bit of damage occured before 20 and in two isolated events, one of which was a huge wake-up call for me.

I played a show right next to a VERY loud drummer and experienced a significant temporary threshold shift and tinnitus for some months before it finally, thankfully restored to at or nearly the level of before the gig and the tinnitus subsided.

In addition to being around music most of my life, I worked around a lot of heavy equipment when I was younger but wore ear muffs around the equipment.

I think there is something to the more esoteric research around hearing, but I'm convinced that most hearing loss is around everyday things including music that people take for granted. Lawn-mowers, hair dryers, hammering nails (not joking) and of course cymbals, electric guitar, and generally loud shows.

I mix at 85-87dB (peaks at 90 are ok) and am NEVER close on axis to a loud guitar (including my own) or cymbals. Never. Will not do it. Hearing is too precious.

And yes, sadly most drummers I know have high-end that drops like a rock as early as the presence range. I just cannot play with cymbal bashers for that reason (and would also hate to record and mix these types of drummers)

PS As a personal subjective note, I just cannot abide the fashion of loud cymbals with saturation of some sort and heavily limited. What a dreadful, unmusical sound.

 

[rubinstu]

Hearing is complicated and is not the same as an instrument "measuring" or "recording" sound. Consider this: you (most) cannot hear a 19 KHz tone nor can you hear a 20 KHz tone. But if they are played together your ear (or some part of the signal chain between your ear and your brain) does some nonlinear mixing of the two tones and you end up with all kinds of intermodulations starting at 1 KHz. You certainly can "hear" (perceive) those. I believe that this is one of the true underlying causes of improved detail, spatial perception, etc. that audiophiles claim for sampling rates well above the Nyquist frequency of human hearing.

 

[user 37518]

I cannot hear the upper frequency spectrum, but I can definitely hear the 12.5 kHz ringing in my left ear that never stops. I am used to it now, but I can listen to it every day, from the moment I sleep, I wake up, during traffic (it is so high-pitched that it wont get masked by anything), all day. I went to an audiologist, she made a lot of measurements and tests, apparently I can hear very well on both ears, with the exception of that small frequency band in my left ear, which is dominated by that ring. She said there is nothing to do about it.....

That ringing started back in 2016 when I was living in Columbus OH. I got an ear infection, and I went to a nurse practitioner, he decided that my infection wasn't serious so he didn't prescribe anything for it. One week later, my ear was completely swollen, I went back, he decided that this was the time to prescribe antibiotics, but by that time it was too late, I got tinnitus for life. I never expected that I would go through that in the US, never did I have to deal with such incompetent physicians or medical professionals in my country, a country in which medical attention is sometimes considered "sub-par" by those in the US; the irony....

 

[Ricardus]

I am sorry this happened to you.

And I am not surprised by your story.

 

[k brown]

Not all doctors are great diagnosticians; I somethimes feel they should even be separate practices.