|
Homepage
(in Portuguese)
Write me
|
|
I
have a sensorineural hearing loss in the high frequencies, with a pattern that is
typical of noise damage. My hearing loss is moderate between 2 kHz and 8 kHz,
and deeper between 8 and 12 kHz. I'm virtually deaf for sounds above 12 kHz.
I realized that, through
the use of equalizers, I could dramatically improve my pleasure of listening to
music.
Below
you will find a summary of the topics that I discuss in my site (which is in
Portuguese):
-
Hearing
aids, even the most sophisticated digital ones, act only below 8 kHz.
However, the frequencies above 8 kHz are important when one is listening to
music.
-
The
equalizers of the MP3 player software, such as Winamp, Windows Media Player
and Sonique, are very different from each other.
I made a method
for comparing the precision and the effects of equalizers.
I then realized that the equalizer of Winamp 2 is the worst of all; Winamp 5 and Windows Media
Player 9 have better equalizers (although there is much difference between
them). The most precise is the 20-band equalizer of Sonique 1.96.
- a
comparison of the frequencies of the equalizers of Winamp, WMP and Sonique
can be see here.
- be very
careful when using equalizers, specially at louder volumes! I
use them for normal hearing levels - up to 80 db, meaning that even
the boosted frequencies are within safe levels for normal periods of
time. Keep in mind that if you use equalizers at louder levels, the
boosted frequencies - exactly those you already have loss in - will
reach dangerous levels, and the "solution" will make your problem
worse!
-
David McClain developed
Crescendo, a technology made for musical hearing restoration. It
uses compressive equalization and does not have the shortcomings of
hearing aids (which are made for understanding
voice and hearing "daily" sounds, not for listening to music). Visit
the link and read more about Crescendo.
-
I
wanted to discover what I was losing because of my deep loss above 8 kHz,
and I tried boosting a lot the frequencies between 8 kHz and 12 kHz (which I can
still hear if I enhance them enough). To my surprise, some songs, for
example, "The Captain of Her Heart", began to "seem"
very different to me. A new instrument (that everybody with normal hearing
is able to hear, but I'm not) appeared, and this made the music sound more
"rocky", with much more beats, losing much of the "magical
aura" that it had to me. Therefore, I realized that my hearing
loss causes me to hear music with a "mixing" different from
"normal" people hear. Actually,
because of my hearing loss, some music may sound better to me than they
would sound if I had normal ears! (read more)
-
The
equalization settings that give me the most pleasant music are somewhat
different from the settings one would expect by just reading my hearing tests. My
hearing loss is deeper between 3 kHz and 6 kHz - specially at 6 kHz.
However, for me it is more important to boost the frequencies between 2,5
and 3, 5 kHz.
-
It seems that my
hearing has small "oscillations" of a few db's from one day to
another... I think that a normal person may also have those small
oscillations... The difference is that for a normal person, +3db or -3
db would probably be unnoticeable, but for a person like me, with loss
in the 60 db range, a 57 db loss will sound different from a 63 db
loss. So, a setting in a
hearing device or in an audio equalizer that looks ideal one day may
not look so good in another day...
-
Different songs,
specially in genres like pop/rock and dance/trance, have very
different equalizations between them. (I mean the equalization applied
when the song is mixed/mastered, and that will be noticeable even when
you hear the song is played back with bass and treble controls in flat
position). For normal people, those differences may fall within the
range their ears/brain can easily adapt. For me, with a moderate to
severe hearing loss, those differences are above my capability of
accommodation. So:
- there will be different "ideal" equalization settings for different
songs. There are actually some songs for which I need almost no
equalization...
- I wonder
if, when someone begins to have senso-neural hearing loss, he/she may
at first just notice a "change" in his musical preferences. Some songs that
previously seemed very pleasant to hear may no longer look so
interesting, and the favorite songs may become to be songs whose "equalization"
are the inverse of the person's hearing loss. For example, some songs
were mastered with an increase in the 2 to 8 kHz range. These songs
would become (in comparison to other songs) more and more pleasant for
one that is beginning to have a loss in the 2 to 8 kHz range. Only
when the hearing loss becomes deeper and even these songs seem without enough
treble the affected person will note there is something wrong...
but then it will be too
late...
I
was surprised to see how important is the "mental" part of
listening to music. In 2003 I thought my hearing loss had became worse...
To my surprise, I realized that my
brain had partly "forgotten" how to cope with my hearing loss in the high
frequencies... and a kind of "musical exercise" made my brain
learn again how to process the information received from my ears, and
music became brighter and vivid again!
Not back to previous level, but what seemed to be a loss of
"10" became a loss of "5"... not so bad...
What I think
it might have happened: in the beginning of 2003, I had a relatively
severe episode of depression. This caused me to stop listening to
music for many weeks. This might have caused my brain to "forget" how
to process sounds from music...
Let me tell
what happened when I begun using orange glasses, some months ago. At
first, the image appeared with very different colors - much warmer
colors. As time passed, my brain learned how to process that modified
information... and a few seconds after I put the glasses, the colors
begun almost identical as if I was using no glasses. Then my glasses
broke and I stopped using them for some months. When I made new orange
glasses, again colors seemed much warmer and different for some days -
until my brain learned how to process the different info and colors
began to look normal again. I mean, my brain learned how to receive
very different visual info and turn it into normal colors. It was like
a "brain software" that run only when necessary, that is, only when I
put the orange glasses.
I guess that,
many many years ago, my brain developed an equivalent "program", this
time not to change visual info received through orange glasses, but to
change "orange" (subdued) sound info received through ears that had a
neurosensorial hearing loss. As I stopped learning musing for many
months, because of my depression, the effect was similar to when I
stopped using orange glasses... However, my brain kept the other
"always used" "hearing software" - for listening human voice, for
example, the same way it kept the "always used" "visual software" - to
adjust the green tone of fluorescent lamps, for example.
But how did
my brain learn again to use the "hearing software for music"? It seems
to me it was when I begun making some listening exercises. I removed
the treble from the music for 10 to 20 seconds, making the music even
more subdued. When I put the treble control at the mid-position again,
music seemed brighter and more vivid for some seconds - and then I
grew accustomed to it again. This showed to me that my ears still had
enough sensitivity to high frequencies... the problem was that my ears
/ my brain were accommodating to it the wrong way. Repeating many
times the same process (removing the trebles and putting them again)
seemed to make my brain learn that he should not adapt to the "extra
trebles" that appeared when I changed from "low treble" to flat
position. Is this clear?
Let me try
another example. Imagine that, some day by night, you notice that,
your bedroom seems darker that it used to be. You have the same 3
lamps (of, lets say, 100 watts each) in your bedroom, so you think
that, since illumination is the same and you see thinks darker, you
got a visual problem. At first you try to solve the problem putting a
fourth lamp (i.e. the equivalent of boosting the high frequencies with
an equalizer). Then you realize that if you turn off 2 of the 3
original lamps for some seconds, and then you turn them on again, you
see everything perfectly for some seconds. But a few seconds after...
the image begins to look dark again. You realize that your brain, or
your eyes, or both, are becoming used to the
3 lamps in a wrong way.
You realize
that if you repeat the process of "just 1 lamp turned on for some
seconds / all lamps turned on for some seconds", each time you have
all the lamps turned on, it takes more time for you to think your
bedroom is dark... At the end, you realize that once again you see
normally with just the 3 lamps - you no longer need the 4th lamp. Got
the idea?
As
I said before, because of my hearing loss, some music may sound better to me than
they would sound if I had normal ears! Why?
My hearing loss probably begun when I had
mumps by the age of 7. When I
bought a CD with sample frequencies in 1994 I was already deaf for
frequencies above 12 kHz. Maybe I have been deaf for frequencies above
12 kHz, and almost deaf for the 9 to 12 kHz range, since I was a child.
So my brain learned to consider "normal" songs with almost no
information above 8 kHz.
Then, in the beginning of 2003, something I don't identify exactly (maybe
one party I was exposed to too loud sounds for too many hours) made my
loss in some frequencies in the 1 to 8 kHz range still worse. What my
brain "wants" is just to receive again the kind of hearing info it had
before 2003. I mean that:
- people that acquired all their hearing loss is recent years need to
receive an audio correction that reflects all their hearing loss;
- people like me, who have a hearing loss since childhood, and had
this hearing loss made worse because of exposure to loud music,
may need
to receive an audio correction that reflects just the recently
acquired part of the hearing loss.
When I tried to boost frequencies above 8 kHz,
I discovered that many songs had instruments I never noticed. For some
music, those extra sounds made the music more interesting (e.g. some
trance songs), but for most songs the "extra" instruments made the
music worse!
For example, the music "The Captain of Her Heart", by
Double, seemed to have 3 basic "parts" for me - the bass, the vocal
and the continuous background instrument. Then I realized that it had
4 basic parts - the fourth being an instrument that appeared to me
only when I boosted significantly the frequencies above 8 kHz. But I did not like this "complete music
so much as I liked the "incomplete"
version!
One night I tried comparing music "with and without"
the boost above 8 kHz, with a friend that had normal hearing. After a
few songs, she learned which kind of sounds I could hear only with the
"above 8 kHz boost". She could then identify in advance the songs
which would sound very different to me, and the songs in which the
sounds above 8 kHz made few difference
- songs I hear more or less
like normal people...
A
final note: just recently I discovered that I have a hearing loss also
in the low bass range -
a small change at the 32 Hz control of an equalizer makes a lot
of difference for me, when listening to music! This loss, which I also
acquired in the last two years, would not be detected in a normal
hearing exam - which only measure above 250 Hz...
Danceterias are really "hearing killers"! They made my hearing loss in
the 1 to 8 kHz worse and caused a mild hearing loss in the very low
frequencies. That's why now I only goes to danceterias with
ear pads and I never stay there for more than 2 hours and I avoid
the louder areas.
(note:
please
feel free to correct any grammar / spelling mistakes that you may find in this page)
Some
related links:
-
http://www.earinfo.com/howread1.html -
How to read your audiogram
- http://www.digital-recordings.com/publ/pubear.html -
Common
Misconceptions about Hearing
- http://www.silcom.com/~aludwig/EARS.htm -
Music and the Human Ear
- http://www.music-cog.ohio-state.edu/what_is_music_cognition.html -
Music
Cognition
-
http://www.hearinglossweb.com -
about the Crescendo
musical
hearing restoration
system
© ACBA, 2004.
All
product names are trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of their
respective holders.
(last version:
Dec 28, 2004)
|
