The Audiophile Upgrade Easiest to Ignore
Common wisdom when putting together an audio system is to first choose the speakers. It makes sense except speakers are not the last device in the audio hardware chain. Our ears are.
My audiologist tells me about two-thirds of the individuals he tests have a hearing impairment. My left ear significantly dips in the mid-range. My right ear takes a dive at 1kHz. As an avid audiophile, I finally realized that I could never build a truly high fidelity system unless I could properly evaluate audio gear.
I thought that because I could hear voices ok my hearing had to be good for music as well. How wrong I was! Ear infections began to erode my hearing acuity until I had to take hearing tests, treat the problems, and get hearing aids to make up for my deficiencies.
I'll never forget the day when I tried my new pair of hearing aids. I could carry on a conversation without uttering "What did you say?" with great frequency. And I could hear music in its full glory. It's as if I had bought a new piece of audio gear, which in fact I had, and tonality, instrument separation, and the rest of the attributes often used to describe an excellent piece of gear had made an appearance
I regret not having corrected my hearing much sooner. I missed on a great deal of joy for many years. I'm writing this post to urge those of you fellow audiophiles, even if you have no problem hearing normal speech, to get a hearing test. There are good ones in free apps that are a good first step towards a professional test. One called "Hearing Test" is quite exceptional and available on Android phones.
Doing a hearing test takes just a few minutes and is extremely easy to do. Don't cheat yourself of all the subtleties and nuances that music offers when it is so easy to do something about it.
And let the community know. Perhaps then print and video audio reviewers will follow suit and improve the credibility of their reviews. God knows what they often say about gear performance sounds nothing like what I hear, even allowing for differences in equipment synergy and room acoustics.
If would be awesome if reviewers published their own hearing tests and what they have done to correct any deficiencies they have. I don't think it's asking for too much given the influence they have on the audio equipment we spend a great deal of money to acquire.
THE MOST important piece to the audiophool puzzle. When the hearing deficit becomes markedly evident in tests, you can only do so much striving for T.A.S. - room, gear and tweaks. Tinnitus, with hearing loss @7Khz here. Adapting without aid, until the inevitable- or perhaps lady luck is with me until I reach 100? Probably be more concerned with the R.A. by then. |
@psalvet : thanks for the heads up about the Widex. I’m considering expensive aids vs Costco. The expensive one are better, but the c. $4k difference seems to be almost all in the digital processing and audiologist markup. I had Oticon Intiga 10’s. They died, and I can’t get parts. @stingreen: just wait. Aids are certainly inferior to good hearing, but they improve on not hearing things at all. They at least help cymbals and so on sound more like the real thing. But since it is an extra a/d converter, optimized for small size far more than for quality, the sound can get irritating. sadly, once those little cilia in your ear are dead, no amount of amplification helps all that much. I vacilate between using them, or not, with music.
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I have tinnitus and the usual HF loss associated with being 70. I have tried several hearing aids, which have mostly varied from hideous to absurd. The best are the Nuheara IQ Buds from Australia, which offer a customized hearing test, and the full suite of BT, Noise Reduction, and multiple modes for home, restaurant, airplane, etc. courtesy of multiple microphone tricks. I would wear them more, except their battery life, due to all their functionality is only about 4 hours. Long enough for dinner out, most of a flight to Hawaii. All for $400. When I try a prescription pair that's 10X as much, with none of the functionality and horrible sound quality, I walk out very disappointed. There are no hearing aids on in the market that can justify more than $500 price. Add 4 hours of an audiologists time at $250/hr you arrive at $1500. Tops. |
