Hearing test

[audioguru]

I am the old audio guy with "pretty good hearing". I said I could hear frequencies from DC to green light. I love to hear the sizzling high frequencies in music. I was wrong.

My wife said I could not hear her and other people. My excuse was that they mumbled or turned away from me when talking to me.
I had trouble understanding young people and TV. My excuse was they had problems, not me.

A flyer came in the mail. FREE hearing test. FREE 2 weeks trial of the latest Widex (from Denmark) digital hearing aid. I phoned for an appointment but they said they were booked up. I said everybody will not come, can I wait there on standby? They said no, they confirmed all appointments. Come on Monday at 9:00AM.
Ding-a-ling. They called after a few minutes and said they had a cancellation, can I come immediately??
Hee, hee, they don't want me to know that probably hardly anybody replied to their promotion.

I joked with the receptionist that the pretty young lady on the flyer was an old photo and she is probably an old hag today at head office like real estate sales people. Nope. The audiologist is the pretty young lady. I went in a sound proof room that sounded like I died in there, got earphones and a pushbutton. "Push the button when you hear the tone". I did for many frequencies from 250Hz to 8kHz at various levels in each ear then with wideband noise added.
She spoke in the earphones for me to repeat each word she said. I missed a few.

She said my hearing is normal for people (old geezers) my age (69):
1) Word Recognition Score (%) right 68, left 78. Pretty bad.
2) Hearing losses. 250Hz= -22dB. 500Hz to 1kHz= -40dB. 1.5kHz to 4kHz= -60dB. 6kHz to 8kHz= -70dB. Severe Loss is -71dB to -90dB. I tried higher frequencies at home and I can hear them if they are loud enough. The tiny hearing aids were programmed to match my hearing losses and various rubbery-plastic ends were tried for the best fit. They keep sliding out of my ears so more ends are ordered for me to try.

OVERWHELMING!! I heard things I shouldn't and heard things I haven't heard for years. I heard a doctor talking on the other side of a wall in the next office. My own voice was loud. Outside the road traffic was fairly loud and I hoped a motorcycle (no mufflers) would not come blasting past. I heard people talking behind but near me. I looked around and they were 1km away. I heard seagulls and smaller birds chirping. I had to turn down the treble controls on my car radio and TV sound system. I can hear my dogs breathing. Music now makes me feel a little emotional that it sounds so wonderful, like the vivid colors and clarity after my cataracts operations and my complete survival of a heart attack.

They seem to adjust their gain to match the average sound levels but I did not notice an awful compressor effect like on TV.
Their frequency response is very wide and they have an option of changing very high audio frequencies one octave lower but I do not know if that feature is turned on. They mess-up occasionally and make a short BEEP. A clock chiming the hour? The hearing aids are tiny (mostly the small battery) and weigh almost nothing.

The demo is the most expensive version at $5500 per pair with the promo discount and government subsidy already added. The mid version is $3300 and the cheap one is $2900. If she can make them fit then I might haggle down the $3300 to $3000 and buy them. The appointment lasted 2 hours.

My blind eyes (cataracts) were fixed. My teeth were fixed. The arteries feeding my heart were fixed and now my hearing is about to be fixed. Am I "born again"?? I feel great.

 

[Pommie]

What you describe, people mumbling etc., is exactly my experience. I know it's me but have put off getting anything done about it. I too have had eyes heart and teeth fixed, maybe time for ears also.

Mike.

 

[SPDCHK]

I know I am deaf. I have tinnitus from years and years of power station commissioning. Constant high frequency ringing in my head.

We have to go on annual medical tests for all the mine house groups and companies we design, build and commission plants for. With each year’s ear test I’m borderline. Luckily for me I do the control system, and I’m mainly always based in the engineering or control rooms. I have to wear double ear protection if I have to go out to the plant these days.

I’m also seriously considering doing the hearing aid thing, but I’m scared the industrial noise will just be amplified even more, and will be cascading my current deafness. Suppose it’s something I should then only wear at home? But at 47, I really don’t want to, not yet . I’ll wait till the wife starts screaming at me .

 

[Reloadron]

Well AG you have me by a few years but I also do not have the hearing I once had. Not ready for hearing aids yet but not hearing like I did in my 20s or 30s anymore. My wife who is about your age still has very good hearing, she picks up on sounds I don't or have to listen really hard to hear. Too many loud jet engines and gunfire over the years for me. I will say I am happy where I am at.

Ron

 

[cowboybob]

What???

 

[Reloadron]

What???

Yeah, that about covers it. Huh? What?

Ron

 

[audioguru]

I notice that young people today end each sentence with a growl. Their voice runs out of air or something. The young lady on TV who is reading the breaking news says, "The airplane crash was caused by the ... growlllll." Huh? What?
My new hearing aids help only when the person ends each sentence in a whisper which is also very common today because they do run out of air maybe because their bra is too tight or something.
I never learned how to lip-read because I am busy looking at the lady's .... never mind.

Last night there was a TV show where the audience was clapping and the awful TV station compressor was too slow to cut the levels of the loud claps. My new hearing aids also could not cut the levels of the loud claps and it was too loud.

I turn off the hearing aids each night by sliding open the battery doors. HEY! They remembered my volume control setting (They have 12 clicks. I like 4 down from max.) the next morning. I will try a different setting tonight.

Just now I played tones at different frequencies into my pretty good TV speaker system. The hearing aids work well up to 12kHz and I guess my hearing loss is too much at higher frequencies. I sense continuous noise at the very high frequencies I cannot actually hear. I think it is called Tinnitus.

 

[Tony Stewart]

My wife lost here left ear hearing for while with fluid in her ear and then bacterial meningitis. I tested her hearing in the living room with a slow sweep from Audacity. It confirmed my hearing was still good to 15k and hers was down 40dB on one side. Her hearing is more or less back to normal but still gets ear aches from anything below room temp so she wears ear muffs frequently.

My father who needed a hearing aid at my age due to gun fire practise in the RCMP when he started in the 40's without hearing protection.

So far at 63 my hearing is still good in spite of attending many loud rock concerts with 0.5MW of audio power ( US festival) and personal taste for loud music when studying for exams. hehe. I dont know how my parents tolerated it. Now I still enjoy Brit Floyd music at loud volumes with Dark Side of the Moon. No RAP pls.

I always tested my hearing by rubbing my fingers gently near my ear like a white noise test. Occasionally I get tinnitus around 10kHz.

Although I still have a hard time picking out the words in music, that's more of a detector modulator fault in my brain than hearing.

When I was young with a Panasonic Reel to Reel tape and stereo mic, I was always amazed how with headphone I could hear birds chirping down the street much clearer.

 

[SPDCHK]

Now I still enjoy Brit Floyd music at loud volumes with Dark Side of the Moon. No RAP pls.

Aha! Now I know why I'm turning deaf. The same for me! Pink Floyd all the way at full blast while I was studying

 

[gary350]

I have hearing loss problems too. I have a pretty bad high frequency loss people that speak in a certain frequency range I see their lips moving but I hear nothing, usually women. All the high frequency is missing form words like s, ph, f, t, ch are missing. The word school sounds like hool to me.

I have learned something very interesting, as sound travels across the room high frequencys are lost first and all the low frequency arrives to my ear. The closer I am to a person talking the better I hear what they say because the high frequency has not been lost yet.

Hearing aid sellers refuse to give me one for my left ear sound has to be above 120 db for me to hear anything and 65 db for my right ear. But I have solved the problem. I bought a 30 wire to plug into the TV so I can plug in ear phones at watch TV across the room 20 feet away. WOW I can hear things I have not heard in 30 years. Now I can watch TV again. I normally can not hear birds, crickets, on TV but now I can. Foreign movies are many times better than american movies now I have no trouble hearing and understanding what people say.

I built myself a tiny amplifier to carry it in my shirt pocket now I can hear people talking again. The mic picks up high freq sounds my ear can not hear but sound only has to travel 1/4" from ear phone to my ear so no high frequency is lost.

TV use to sound like everyone was talking with a mouth full of food.

 

[KMoffett]

Always makes me wonder if the audiofools, that demand 0.0001 THD and audio flat from 0 .05 Hz to 100KHz, have ever had their hearing tested.

Ken

 

[audioguru]

I also listened to Dark Side of The Moon many years ago. I liked the heartbeat feeling at the beginning.
I have it playing now. VERY LOUDLY!! It sounds great. I watched my exposed woofer playing the 16Hz heartbeat. Then comes, " I've always been mad, I know I am mad".
But the You Tube recording plays different things than on the original recording.
I am playing a different You Tube recording now and it is the original. It gives me goose bumps.

Long ago when I was friends with Mary Wanna it seemed a little different, everything seemed a little different. I haven't been friends with Mary for many years and I will never see her again.

Now that I have the curves of my hearing losses (I wonder if they cheated a little to make it look worse than it is?) then I thought deeply about designing and making my own hearing aids.
Ear pods from an MP3 player. Ordinary pretty large electret microphones, but maybe I can get smaller ones used in cell phones. The hearing aids have a front mic and a rear mic for each ear but mine will be only in the front and the omni-directional mics will pickup all kinds of background noises behind me. What will hold the mics near my ears? A headband?
An equalizer is simple if it has mini trimpots. Then two little output amplifiers. The hearing aids are powered by a small 1.5V zinc-air battery but mine might use a 9V battery or a Lithium coin cell. Sometimes I don't wear much clothing then I will need to strap the electronics box to me and my wife knows what to strap it on.

 

[Tony Stewart]

This is what I'm talking about

Pink Floyd could never have a decent stage show unlike studio recordings. This group "Brit" Floyd is touring North America and will be in Toronto next month or so.

 

[Tony Stewart]

I also listened to Dark Side of The Moon many years ago. I liked the heartbeat feeling at the beginning.
I have it playing now. VERY LOUDLY!! It sounds great. I watched my exposed woofer playing the 16Hz heartbeat. Then comes, " I've always been mad, I know I am mad".
But the You Tube recording plays different things than on the original recording.
I am playing a different You Tube recording now and it is the original. It gives me goose bumps.

Long ago when I was friends with Mary Wanna it seemed a little different, everything seemed a little different. I haven't been friends with Mary for many years and I will never see her again.

Now that I have the curves of my hearing losses (I wonder if they cheated a little to make it look worse than it is?) then I thought deeply about designing and making my own hearing aids.
Ear pods from an MP3 player. Ordinary pretty large electret microphones, but maybe I can get smaller ones used in cell phones. The hearing aids have a front mic and a rear mic for each ear but mine will be only in the front and the omni-directional mics will pickup all kinds of background noises behind me. What will hold the mics near my ears? A headband?
An equalizer is simple if it has mini trimpots. Then two little output amplifiers. The hearing aids are powered by a small 1.5V zinc-air battery but mine might use a 9V battery or a Lithium coin cell. Sometimes I don't wear much clothing then I will need to strap the electronics box to me and my wife knows what to strap it on.

I would Definitely go for the above concept for stereo earbuds with common mode rejection adjustments for rejecting background noise.
Since there is a loss of direction front rear, you might need to improvise with Quadraphic earbuds.
Location of the mics is less important than the need to filter wind and touching them so they need to be well protected with socks, yet exposed.
You could hide it in a hat.

 

[schmitt trigger]

For me, loud music meant listening to Emerson, Lake and Palmer.
Positively loved the way Keith Emerson would rip away the Moog synth.

Nowadays, when I listen to the same recordings, they sound shrill and harsh to me. My hearing curve must be pretty skewed.

 

[gary350]

The old music was good. "Some" of the new music is good too.

 

[Tony Stewart]

I hear ya about ELP. I helped out in the UofM studio then.
"From The Beginning" is still sweet to my ears.

Grand-daughters are keen about Katy Perry. ... eye candy

 

[audioguru]

These hearing aids have two settings: Mastah (Master in my language) and Cumfut (Comfort in my language).
In the Master setting they are too loud and too shrill unless I turn the volume way down.
In the Comfort setting they boost all frequencies a little for speech but after a few seconds with music they slowly cut the highs and become more muffled than my hearing. I do not like that!

Occasionally one ear will make a short beep and I thought it might be interference from my wireless keyboard (the hearing aids have wireless controls) but I cannot make it happen. It beeped just now on the right then a few seconds later on the left.

Without the hearing aids I adjust the tone controls on my stereos for a grinning Happy Face (a little boost for lows and highs). With the hearing aids I turn the treble way down which is wrong.
I see the Audiologist for any corrections in 2 days.

 

[Tony Stewart]

I remember my Bogan Stereo Tube Amp had the proper implementation for loudness compensation,
but called it "Contour" ( like bathtub) It follows the Fletcher Muenchen human hearing response.

When the phone rang, I would select the "Contour" switch and the loudness was cut 15dB more in the mid range and a few db outside. No fiddling with levels.

This is because our ears have many more decades of sensitivity in the mid-range. and it makes more sense to cut the mid-range when you want a temporary reduction in volume than adjust volume then Bass treble or turn down volume then add Boost or Loudness


The purpose is to have a flat response most of the time and compensate at low levels. But to go to low levels you dont want to boost, you simply want to cut mostly the mid-range for reduced interference.

Rather today there is a loudness switch to boost bass and treble at low levels of volume for whatever reason, but not not just to make it quieter.

A CONTOUR CUT makes more sense.

But smart earbuds have adaptive DSP's now so it should be even better for user interface and smart equalization.

 

[audioguru]

My demo hearing aids have a loudness contour that does the opposite of the frequency contour that I want. It seems to be designed for voices and completely destroys music.
1) In the Master Mode most sounds are too loud and it over boosts 1kHz to 4kHz speech mid frequencies.
2) In the Comfort mode it sounds good at first with reduced levels and less boost of high frequencies then after a few seconds it slowly cuts highs and lows.
I discovered that each time you change modes, if the volume was set to maximum then it reduces the volume to 4 clicks down from maximum.
It was a nuisance when I had the volume set to maximum when I was snooping on what somebody over there was saying but I clicked the mode switch to have it tell me which mode it is in (no LED indicators).
I will find out about the Music Mode tomorrow. It does not have a music mode today.

My Yamaha receiver has a loudness contour switch and a pot to adjust how much effect. I NEVER turn it off and I set its effect threshold for the efficiency of my speakers and I NEVER touch it again.