How good is your hearing ? And how do you know ?

This is sounding like yet another “baiting” thread. Maybe this forum section should be renamed :-)

inna could you you be more specific please? I think helomech has interpreted your OP as dissing people who think they have “golden ears” where I interpret you as dissing people who you think have poor hearing/listening skills (hence yoir comment “so why buy good stuff?”)

Can you clarify which group of people you started this thread to insult? Thanks ;-)

cleeds,

Exactly.  

A thread asking “how good is your hearing?” is certainly a reasonable topic for a thread.  But the OP makes it clear the thread actually wasn’t started with good intentions, but is rather an occasion for inna to insult the hearing of others and have a “laugh” at others expense.  Oh...and if anyone notices this obvious fact it’s “who, little old me? If you think I meant to diss anyone’s hearing  - that’s on you, not him.  

We we should ask members like inna to do better than start baiting threads like this, that start with self-satisfied implied insults.

If this thread takes an informative direction it will be despite the OP.

Ah, so now the reason for the weird OP comes out.   It was just an excuse for Inna to make a personal (and ridiculous) rant against digital sources.  Maybe try a less misleading thread the next time?

inna wrote:

Michael, languages are untranslatable.

Wow that’s ridiculous. Just a flat out erroneous claim.

If the language is digital you must not convert it into analog, you must take it as it is. This is for machines not humans, as we are now.

Says inna.

The logic you are proposing is simply untenable.

The process of recorded sound to play back relies on transducers; that is of transducing one form of energy/signal to another. To use your analogy, of translating one "language" to another.

Microphones transduce acoustic energy into electrical energy. Right there you are changing the signal to a whole different "language." Speakers are electrical transducers, converting electrical energy into acoustic energy. With a lot happening in between.

Oh no, if you play a vinyl record, so beloved by many audiophiles (including me) now the signal has been translated to a new physical language - physical grooves! Just how alike to a real trumpet playing are physical grooves in vinyl???? Better not translate that again it should just stay as grooves. Drat, how do we get to hear it? Oh yes, by translating those physical structures into an electrical signal, that go through other alterations to be translated again by the speaker.

If we took the principle you are trying to sell about digital being an invalid form because it must be converted from one system of information to another, we couldn’t listen to analog either. It’s just silly.

I have a really nice turntable set up and a digital source, and both sound fantastic, as a great many audiophiles have found.

But of course, the implication inna has set up here will be that’s because we aren’t "talented listeners" whereas inna of course is a talented listener.

We are so fortunate to have "talented listeners" like inna tell us what’s what.

This whole thread is based on a silly ego stroke.

@bdp24

I'm curious: when you talk about your high frequency hearing loss, did you mean it was already gone 30 years ago, or that now your hearing tops out at 15k?   If it tops out at 15k now, and if you are middle aged, that's quite good.

I'm almost 55 and mine tops out just under 15k.  Which frankly surprises me, especially given having played in very loud bands earlier in life and working in production sound for 30 years. 

There's various on-line "how old is your hearing" tests and I come up with a "hearing age" of between 38 and 40 years old, so not doing too badly at almost 55.   But I believe I'm now at the crest in age where hearing starts taking a bigger dive in the high frequencies...so I better get as much listening in while I can enjoy those sparkling highs, while I can!

But, I've been protecting my hearing for a long time.   I started noticing Tinnitus in the early 90's and that put the fear-of-gawd in me, so I started protecting my hearing from then on.  Many of the guys I played with in bands who didn't protect their hearing are now having some pretty serious hearing issues!  Like waking up one morning and all their high frequency is gone!

inna, you still seem to be stretching to come up with  justifications for the fact you personally (apparently) just don’t like digital sources.

You are just ignoring what I pointed out before; that analog involves gross changes of the form of carrier for a signal, and your logic works against analog as much as digital. When acoustic energy is transduced into electricity it is then NOTHING LIKE the organic thing that sat in front of the microphone. How much like an actual entire symphony orchestra is a teeny, tiny stream of electricity? And yet a teeny stream of electricity is used to represent an entire orchestra until it reaches the speakers to be translated back to acoustic energy. And..again...sit in front of a live orchestra....look down at the grooves of a record. If you can not admit the astounding alteration that the sound of a symphony has undergone to be changed in to plastic grooves, you just can’t be taken seriously. In trying to portray the digital carrier system as somehow turning real sounds in to some unnatural "other" form, you simply are ignoring the same happens in analog.

Further, your reasoning ought to apply to visual signals as well, such as video cameras and televisions. If your reasoning were correct "you ought to keep the visual information all analog." But the digital TVs and sources of today are now vastly more realistic than any analog TV signals we had before.

We get it. You don’t care for digital. But your rationalisations in trying to go beyond your mere opinion, to prescribing how things ought to be as if you’d found some objective truth to declare, just don’t hold water.

@bdp24

Understood.

I've also used Musician’s Ear Plugs since the 90's.  (Along with heavier duty earplugs if necessary).  I'll still use them even in a pub/restaurant if it's really loud (and as I'm sort of a "foodie" who loves dining out, it's depressing that restaurants have been ever more deliberately designed to be louder and louder, so they feel like a "happening place.")

As for Tinnitus and sleeping, I decided long ago not to use masking, simply because I didn't like the idea of feeling reliant on some external help.  So I just got used to it and generally don't have an issue sleeping.
(Unless I've had some recent really loud noise exposure which makes the ringing worse for a while).