Is Your Hearing Improving?

[Markyboard]

I know it's counter to anything medically related, but I could swear sometimes my hearing is getting better. Especially in the higher frequency ranges.

I turned 60 earlier this year.

[KuruPrionz]

No, I foolishly spent too much time rocking out loud and proud. I have some hearing damage. It's not critical, I don't boost the trebles way up because I can't hear them.

 

My hearing "knowledge" has increased considerably over the years. I can quickly notice and fix a bit of boominess, a lack of a certain midrange or a touch of harshness. I recognize the areas that need addressing in terms of frequency response or volume. As the brain grows, the hearing has diminished somewhat.

 

Still on the right side of the grass though, so there's that.

[Anderton]

I know it's counter to anything medically related, but I could swear sometimes my hearing is getting better. Especially in the higher frequency ranges.

I turned 60 earlier this year.

 

My hearing is excellent given my age, and I attribute that to wearing hearing protection on stage, even back in the 60s. I never go to a concert, travel by air, or walk around New York without hearing protection.

 

However, our ears also operate in conjunction with our brain. This is why extended mixing sessions can be so difficult. Here's a simple experiment:

 

1. Listen to music for about 5 minutes on a set of headphones.

2. Switch to a different model of headphones, made by a different company. Listen to the same music; it will sound different.

3. After 5 minutes, your ears will become acclimated to the difference, and the music will sound "correct."

 

I think what's happening in your case is that all those years of ear training are paying dividends, because your brain knows how to correct the data coming in from your ears.

 

I'm not an audiologist, though...that's just a theory.

[Markyboard]

What you guys say makes sense. This isn't in the context of mixing but rather just hearing the sound quality of certain synths. I've been focused on aliasing artifacts and high frequency harmonics lately and I'm a bit surprised that I'm picking up on stuff that no one else seems to notice. This morning I heard the slightest hint of aliasing coming from an all analog synth's single VCO. WTF? It was really annoying and had me chasing potentially bad mixer channels and checking for leakage into digital effects etc. Turned out the oscillator fm amount knob was set just barely off of 0 .

 

But now I think maybe part of this "improved hearing" is actually my S/N ratio improving over the last few years. That is of course excluding my posts.

[Song80s]

The objective way to measure is to take a hearing test from a audiologist.

[Mike Rivers]

The objective way to measure is to take a hearing test from a audiologist.

 

And then what? You'll have some information but there isn't a lot that you can do with it unless your hearing is really shot. General audiologist testing (they're the ones who sell the $5,000 hearing aids) concentrate on the speech range and usually don't measure anything below 300 Hz and above 5 kHz. But they can tell you a whole lot about what's in that band - like if you have a null or few that are in the range that make consonants distinct - something that they can compensate for when adjusting your hearing aid so that you can understand normal speech under normal conditions better. That's valuable to the folks who are always saying "WHAAATT?" and talking loud. And most modern DSP-based hearing aids have settings to give best listening in a crowd, or for music.

 

You can get a "full range" hearing test from some audiologists. There was a time when at the NAMM and AES shows, there was a hearing test bus, I believe sponsored by Shure, where you could get your hearing checked, but I think it's been 5 years or more since that program ended. I have no idea what they did with the data - probably used it to make better in-ear earphones. But they kept records, if you allowed, and usually they could pull up previous tests and show you what you've lost over time. It was a great service for the crowd there, and free, too.

[Anderton]

The objective way to measure is to take a hearing test from a audiologist.

 

It can tell you the current state of your hearing, but it won't help you find out if your hearing has improved if you don't have older test results for comparison.

[Song80s]

I guess I was not clear.

 

My assumption is to consult with a professional audiologist at a medical care facility .

 

I am accustomed to Kaiser, out here in CA, as they have all the medical specialties.

 

When I have my hearing tested, they are tracking and looking for hearing loss based on a prior visit/test results

 

There was not 1 mention of a $5000 hearing aid, or sales pitch for this or that.

[dboomer]

No ... but I"m hoping this actually works.

 

https://kfor.com/news/local/researchers-in-oklahoma-city-developing-hearing-restoration-pill/

[pinkfloydcramer]

My hearing is severely damaged but holding steady the last decade or so. All HF hearing is gone- nothing left over 1.8k. But I still hold my own with gigging and don't make excuses, still do well at following other musicians on stage as long as say, a sax player doesn't get WAY up there in the Lenny Pickett range. I do miss out on some calls for gigs where audibles called out are important. And I wish I could still hear high harmonica notes, not being able to do that anymore affected my motivation to pursue that instrument further.

 

My theory is that due to losing all the highs, I am extra picky about what I still can hear which is mids and lows. So I will be happy to critique your mixes for those, send them on. . Any recording is done with plug-and-play devices, which in the 00's was a Boss BR8 hard disc recorder. For anything of any importance I enlist the ears of someone with normal hearing before I consider it done.

 

Earlier today I took this and did well: https://tonedear.com/ear-training/intervals but it's not really a test of hearing ability- none of the test tones are too high for me to make out.

[The Real MC]

60% hearing loss in both ears due to birth defect. Worn hearing aids since I was 3 years old. I was always cautious with the volume wars in bands I have played in. I get my hearing checked often and fortunately it has never degraded.

 

What I didn't know is that over the years they were picking up intricate details of instruments and mixes (timbre, dynamics, EQ, subtle FX, etc). I am blessed with very analytical ears. They got even better when I started wearing digital hearing aids 25 years ago. Although I hear very little above 12K, it hasn't stopped me from making some good mixes.

 

Ten years I was considering a new hearing aid so my audiologist loaned me some different brands. Fortunately I worked in the perfect testing environment for hearing aids - a production factory. With my usual hearing aid, I could walk from a loud noisy production floor to quiet offices with zero adjustment to the hearing aid. None of the loaners passed that acid test. They all had shortcomings with dynamic response, compression effects (sometimes couldn't hear the fork trucks!). Since I was into pro audio at the time, my audiologist considered my input valuable because I could explain in audio engineering terms why the aids were not sufficient.

[Anderton]

Y'all might be interested in a review I wrote over at craiganderton.org on the ASI 3DME In-Ear Monitors. They protect your hearing like traditional in-ear monitors, but they also include tiny mics in the earpieces, along with the ability to adjust the level. So you can dial in how much of the audience, other bandmates, etc. you want to hear. Although it's obviously intended for live gigs, one cool studio application is being able to record a guitar amp TURNED UP REALLY LOUD, but only subject your ears to as much of it as you want.

 

When I had them here for review, I tried recording the mic outputs into a portable recorder to see if I could do binaural recording. The sound was decent enough for recording sound environments and effects...not the intended use, of course

[Tom Williams]

I know it's counter to anything medically related, but I could swear sometimes my hearing is getting better. Especially in the higher frequency ranges.

I turned 60 earlier this year.

At 61, mine's been holding up pretty well. Like many, I was always very careful about overly loud noises. In my teens and 20s, I could hear high frequencies that were inaudible to others -- like TV flyback transformers at the other end of the house, or "ultrasonic" motion detectors at the local mall.

 

There is a cheapo (or free) app on iPhones that purports to guess if you're a teenager by playing tones above 10kHz. We ran that on me, and to my surprise my hearing nowadays rolls off around 12.5 kHz. I didn't even know -- never noticed it.