Should reviewers post their hearing test results?


great thread by joshcloud 9 the other day, about hearing...
turns out i can't hear below 40 Hz, or above 16 kHz. not that i believe the results of a web-based audiogram are accurate, but merely suggestive.
it got me wondering though, these reviewers with "golden ears", what limitations do they have? i mean, we all lose some hearing with age, and noise exposure. so it'd be interesting to know, at least on a one-time basis or web site, just how sensitive these ears are that people trust.
i understand that the only ears that count eventually, are our own.
but imagine an art critic who is color-blind. it wouldn't mean he/she couldn't be a critic, just that those reviews would be, ahem, colored, by knowing whose eyes are examining the work.
otowick

Showing 3 responses by subaruguru

I too suspect that the 20-36Hz material comprising your test wasn't reproduced correctly. A low freq loss is highly unlikely. However, if you're a normal middle-aged male you probably have a rapid falloff above 12-14kHz. Pretty normal.
Certainly publishing a standardized curve for a tester/criris isn't a bad idea, principally to rule out gross anmolies. My interest would be more to notice the actual subtle nonlinearities (some caused by the pinna, so no headphone testing allowed!) each of us has. Personal deviations are usually much greater than those of preamps and amps, for example, and perhaps many transducers (cartridges and speakers). Somehoe our earbrains all accomodate to our personal onterpretations of perfect linearity AS WE EXPERIENCE IT, but it would be interesting to try to replicate a trusted writer's hearing with a speaker who's nonlinearity matches it just to know what it's like to hear with someone else's ears, eh?
Perhaps this acoustic research has already been done, but I'm not an AES member....
Paul, I agree that the HF rolloff could become the red herring...like tweeter extension, maybe.
But seeing the undulations between 100 and 10k, for example, could give readers an idea of whether a reviewer has a midrange dip, a low-treble "hardness" sensitivity, etc. I also wonder if soundstage height sensitivity is correlated with pinna size, too?!
Regardless of trauma-induced suckouts, people each hacve their own response "signaure", as all ears are NOT created equal.
Paul, the aural height information is a function of your pinna, NOT the musical software. It's true that stereo reproduction won't often provide visual soundstage cues, but your pinna certainly help tell you whether you're sitting in the balcony or on the floor, for example.
With headphones there's no vertical cueing.
I too forgot this aspect of our hearing apparatus a few weeks back when out at Symphony with my acoustician-guru and friend Tom Horrall, who responded with a "What'd you do, cut off your pinna?" after a comment I made about not being able to locate a an extraneous noise source up near the ceiling. I won't forget again!