hearing loss and speaker selection
So being 75 I've got hearing that ranges between 80hz and 9,000hz. So should I give a rat's patoot about a speaker's ability to reproduce frequencies below and above this range since I can't hear them? Obviously, I'm gonna shoot for those that handle the mids the best. Now I know the proof is in the pudding so that why we listen to speakers and pick the ones that we like best. But for the sake of discussion has there been any double-blind test or any test for that matter that supports the notion that unheard sound affects the sound you can hear through your speakers. Or should speaker manufacturers make a senior version of their speaker for us elderly folks. he says tongue in cheek.
I understand hearing aids can restore some additional high frequencies, but I wonder if they can be tailored to replicate a tube sound over SS equipment or vis versa. Headphones aside is there some other specialized device(s) a hearing impaired person can use beyond a hearing aid that can maximize or enhance the listening pleasure? I know there are many prior posts on hearing loss but I could find none that addressed increasing the listener's frequency range or for that matter clarity. Some older posts did address clarity say go for speakers with the best clarity.
Have fun you can't take it with you.
I’ve been looking at Focals for a shift from my Dunlavys due to the former's signature emphasis in the upper frequencies (what I’ve been told). Did you move to Focal from more neutral speakers? As much as I love my Dunlavys, as my hearing has decreased in the past decade, the Dunlavys, spectrally, sound more and more muted. Dynamically, however - they are sublime. |
Batman -thanks for your post and for sharing your situation. Glad your hanging tough. So scientific advances now allow the user to make adjustments that allow for your enjoyment of music with hopefully more advances in the works. Thank you for sharing your experience and advice. dabel- You got delt a bad hand for sure but you have a Great attitude, Jimmy V's mantra, and an inspiration for us all, never quite. I also have cancer as I am sure like many here. Just take one day at a time. Hopefully, science can drive it into remission and you can get on with your life with an insight few have. I go to Fox Chase cancer center near Philly. I mention them as I've not seen an institutional culture of compassion, caring and service exhibited like this place, from the parking attendant to the superintendant as they understand the people that they see are in a battle for their lives. I'm rooting for you dabel.
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I have been using hearing aids for over 3 years now. I am half deaf and half blind as I approach 66 years old. 45 years of noise exposure (used protection as much as possible) and an avid audiophile for almost 50 years. I have just went thru a situation where my tinnitus has seemed to cause a distortion at higher frequencies (like a radio station slightly off station) which my hearing aids amplify. My audiologist is very patient with me as I carried a chart the last visit of frequencies for various instruments to show where I was having problems when listening. Higher notes on violin, female voices, and cymbals as they get louder begin to distort. I am down 40 db. after 4000hz. My aids are Phonak brand about 6 grand 3 years ago and have a music setting. All the limiters must be set to off and compression etc. If set by the computer for your audiogram they are unlistenable as too much gain. Tinny with water from the faucet sounding like Niagra falls type of thing going on so we dialed back the area of compensation by 4 db and raised the lower bass/midrange some so now its enjoyable to listen to music again as I was ready to list my gear for sale. Hearing aids were designed for hearing voices. They are coming out with new models and soon you will be able to sit in your chair and make adjustments with your phone aka equalizer at the ready. Hearing aids cannot make you magically hear what is lost forever at least my hearing is fine up too 2000hz for the bass and male voices. Good luck to all you guys approaching the "Golden Years" and young guys protect what you have now. Its the ringing that never stops where I and millions suffer with every minute of the day. We want to put a man on Mars but I say what about taking some of the technology/money and help people suffering now. I do find that a more transparent speaker helps me along with gear. Using Focal Kanta 2s with Bel Canto amps,dac, and transport. Best wishes to all that are hearing impaired but I have no one else to blame but me. I wish that correcting hearing would be as simple as correcting eye sight. Just hand me my reading glasses and I see clearly but hearing is another game. Please use caution with that volume knob when listening. Peace to all |
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I agree with @fiesta75 try a Schiit Loki Max EQ. |
larsman good advice and I will take it. When you mentioned working with the audiologist to program the hearing aid for particular sounds to replicate SS or tubes or perhaps tame a shrill tweeter. I bet there will be an uptick in the sales of hearing aids and appointments with audiologists by audiophiles on this site looking for the next best tweak. it appears that AMT acoustics has a planar hearing aid under development. |
I've worn hearing aids for about 15 years; they cannot restore frequencies that have been lost. Lost is lost. What they can do is effectively EQ a curve to give the impression of better high frequencies in relation to the others. You can work with an audiologist to get a sound from them that you like (or several, as they offer multiple programs), so perhaps you could come up with something that would sound more SS or tube for music. But really, if you don't have hearing aids yet, I would recommend that you visit an audiologist - you might be amazed at how they improve not just music listening, but quality of life. |
MC good for you, 86 articulate, intelligent, opinionated, helping others, and busting chop all the while still pursuing your bliss! Tomic Thank you for your concern I took a couple of those SIN online and my hearing was fine for my age if not a touch better. Those Snell were fantastic. Outside of music my ears were not exposed to high dB. That is except for the two days I lasted on an assembly line making Mustangs during my college summer break. At the time I was waiting for the lottery to see who gets to go to Vietnam. Let me just say Fredric Taylor's Schmidt the pig ironworker is alive and well on the auto assembly line. It was a fascinating two days for a kid at the time studying factory organization and management! Jim congratulations on an impressive career in an ultra stressful job talk about responsibility! Deming's philosophy looms large as each of your products must be perfect as lives depended on it. |
to the OP. You didn’t get completely accurate advice. Not all hearing tests are sine waves. You might consider one of the six or so helpful SIN ( speech in noise ) tests available. There are several high end audio companies that devote time, resources and money towards hearing loss prevention. My mentor runs one of them. Your Snells were a classic. Enjoy the music. BTW i ran a pretty noisy airplane factory, i know the standards, how they were established and most importantly the havoc wrought on those who didn’t take the personal protective equipment seriously- somehow i got by with a lot of live rock as a kid. my best to you ! Jim |
There is something related to age, don't know the reason why yet, but a lot of stuff that younger ears take as detail we find increasingly annoying, fatiguing, sometimes even painful. Fortunately the same things that improve sound quality also improve this annoying aspect of aging. A lot of the things I have done the last year or so both improved my system and did so in a way that made it a lot easier to enjoy. For the most part this was eliminating ringing and resonance with things like springs and Townshend wire, and also better quality parts like caps and resistors in crossovers. These all improve detail not by "making" more detail but by eliminating a lot of extra noise. Kind of like the way it is easy to hear someone talking across the dinner table at home, but not across the dinner table in a noisy restaurant. Their voice is just as clear in both cases but you have to work a lot harder in one to separate their voice from all the rest. This greatly reduces the strain you feel listening to music. I find myself able to relax more into it. Also find a much wider volume range enjoyable. Bottom line you can still get a lot out of it. I sure hope so. 75 is only 11 years away for me! |
MC Thank you for the detailed scientific insight and for your time! As they say, Youth cannot be denied that is except for the ability to hear above 17,000Hz. Frankly, I am surprised I’m not totally deaf for all the Led Zepplin, Who, Stones, etc. blasting away on my Snell C2mk2 back in my youth and continuing to today but with a different system and a different musical focus. AKG I’m with you I’d go for the mids hells bells even without a hearing deficit I prioritize the midrange my Cantons are strong in that range. Oldhvymec Thanks also good information, planars and or Ribbons and EQ. Someday I hope to give both a try. I just hope I have a few some days left in the tank. I’d love to listen to some Maggies and Martin Logans Unfortunately, I do not know anyone in my area that shares my curiosity about gear. The one good store Audiolab in Morrisville Pa. I could visit but I would feel guilty going in just to hear their gear with no intent of buying, the libra in me just won’t let me. Decades ago when I was a kid I’d drive an hour to listen to systems at Soundex in Willow Grove. They knew I was a kid and let me listen to their 6 figure system and other megabuck rooms that they had set up. That seed got me to buy my Snells and Adcom system a decade later and 40 years from then I still got an itch lol. Soix I have Focal headphones they are sweet( little bass shy) but I like to listen to my Cantons.
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Hearing test prove you have hearing loss not gone all together. There is a reason for an EQ and tone control. Room correction is for room correction. Your hearing loss is exclusive to you so is the EQ setting.. Full range speakers are a good place to start. If you limit the speaker you will certainly limit what you MIGHT hear.. Would I spend a fortune? Under 2K for me and I get real happy with a VMPS RM30. Some are over 20 years old.. Bullet proof. Small Planars and ribbons. BTW they have LPads too. You can really punch the mids and highs to help out.. Regards |
Instead of fretting over the possible shortcomings at both frequency extremes, may I suggest that you if you simplify and hone your focus on the VERY BEST midrange reproduction you can get ….. all good will be restored and angst relieved.That’s where 90% of the music spectrum resides.if you get the midrange right: “…all the king’s horses, and all the king’s men….” ergo .,,, that is why I offloaded my honkin’ floorstanders and upgraded to HARBETH 30.2XD standmount speakers. My Yellow Brick Road to Audio OZ has now been restored without concern for any natural aging warts. In my experience, I love the music experience more now then with any speakers before. I’m 69 years old and yes…l too endure that I am inescapably not as good as I once was in many ways; including natural aging induced hearing loss , (but I keep telling my wife that I am as good ONCE as I EVER was ….) IMO, you are over thinking this , so don’t sweat the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things. Enjoy! Old Guys Rule ….. old age and treachery will overcome youth and enthusiasm! |
Yes scott22 there is plenty of evidence that a speakers ability to reproduce sounds outside the range of what you can "hear" does indeed impact the music you are able to hear. The evidence is there scientifically, from personal experience, and even just plain old common sense. The scientific evidence is we have 4 times as many ear cells devoted to detecting frequencies above 20kHz as below. Four times. Hearing tests use sine waves that you will not hear. But your ears will detect these higher frequencies and use them to help localize and identify the source. They are there to detect transient timing information, highly important because you do not just want to know that it was a tiger that snapped the twig, you want to know where the tiger is. Real important stuff. Perfect example, I added Townshend super tweeters to my Tekton Moabs. Even though virtually all the output is outside my hearing range they clearly improve instruments way down into the midrange and even bass. Speaking of bass, really low frequency reproduction improves a sense of space and envelopment even in recordings that don't seem to have any bass. So for example when my DBA was put on Pods I easily heard the improvement even though the first record I played had no discernible bass. Another example, there is a sweep tone used to demagnetize that goes to 20kHz. I can't hear anywhere near 20k. But a young guy here one time was covering his ears in agony telling me to turn it down. I could hear literally nothing. Not one thing. I thought at first the super tweeters were set too high. Could easily happen since I can't hear them anyway. I was going by the way what I could hear sounded. But when we played music he was fine. So again there are huge differences between the static sine wave type test tones we use and music. This same guy by the way, with objectively far superior hearing, couldn't hear a lot of little changes I made that were easy and obvious enough to me. So there is hearing, and there is listening, and the two sometimes overlap but not always. By the way the function of these ear cells devoted to ultra-sonic frequencies does not degrade with age nearly as much as you would think from your rolled off hearing tests. This is another factor that explains why older more experienced listeners can continue to hear and evaluate far better than one would think based just on their rolled off hearing tests. Finally there is common sense. You hear all kinds of things every day in the real world that involve sounds that extend far beyond your range of hearing, at least in terms of our primitive testing methods. Your speakers only really need to reproduce sounds so that they sound just like the ones you hear in real life. You. Not anyone else. To do this properly they need to be capable of response far outside the range you might think based only on routine audiology tests. |
Fuzztone, I posted this as I was curious to HEAR the responses to the question. I just wanted to know what the experts know about this subject, that may be of value or fun to light heartedly kick around. Oh, Fuzz my simple SS system Which by the way I bought on here comprises 9k reference Cantons, JAMO c80 sub, Technic sug700 integrated, and Marantz CD player in a small/midsize room. Maybe a streamer for Christmas? |
@scott22 , I’ve had mild high frequency rolloff and tinnitus since birth. As I’ve gotten older, the rolloff has gotten a little worse, but still not bad enough where I can listen to my system without my hearing aids. Much to the chagrin of my family - I just turn it up louder so I can enjoy. Whether sound you cannot hear affects your experience is a whole ’nother ball of wax I’m not gonna touch. But for me, since I may be getting close to that inflection point where I’ll need to air my ear aids when I listen - I’m thinking I may need to upgrade my speakers to something that emphasizes what I can’t hear very well. So metal dome tweeters, or compression horns, etc... Barring that - instead of a "DSP-able" set of ear aids, the sets that are normally provided by audiologists will correct for what you can’t hear. So you technically can put them on and listen as any person with average hearing will. I’ve worn my set and enjoyed listening, but always thought in my head that "extra layer" (the ear aids’ mic in - amp - speak out) may be taking away from the "purist" experience (*shrug* - another touchy subject, of course). But there will come a point where I’ll be able to only listen with the ’aids on... |
