Trying not to go deaf

[DavidW]

Are you supposed to say when you hear the buzz? I hear it clearly at 20K.

Dude you're like superhuman!

[DavidW]

Assuming Apple will still be around in 20-30 years (hey, you never know with tech company), I wonder if people will be suing it for hearing loss much the same as the tobacco companies have been sued for all the smoking-related ailments.

But listening to an ipod is not addictive (merely trendy), and can easily be remedied by turning down the volume.  And you can't die from listening to an ipod, even at max volume.

[Coopmv]

Dude you're like superhuman!

You mean BAT?   

[DavidW]

You mean BAT?   

Beaux Arts Trio?  Love 'em.

[Diletante]

Dude you're like superhuman!

Hardly so, maybe I'm doing the test wrong.
Or I have excellent speakers.

[Coopmv]

But listening to an ipod is not addictive (merely trendy), and can easily be remedied by turning down the volume.  And you can't die from listening to an ipod, even at max volume.

I will start investing in stocks of hearing aid manufacturers ...   

[Scarpia]

Gradual reduction in the maximum frequency you can hear is typical as a person ages.  It is independent of exposure to excessive volumes and not a good measure of hearing loss.  Hearing loss due to excess exposure occurs as holes or regions on insensitivity within the main audible range.

At one point when I was trying to figure out if my headphones were broken I made a wave file with a chromatic scale of pure sine waves from sub-audible up to reasonably high frequency (not 20 kHz).  In the process I found out I have some hearing idiosyncrasies.

As long as I can remember I have considered my left ear to be more acute than the right, and noticed that left and right were not equivalent by noticing that the dial tone sounds different to me depending on whether I have the phone on my left or right ear.  When I listened to the long chromatic scale with both ears it sounded normal, but when I listened to it on left and right ear individually, I found that there is a range in the middle frequencies where my right ear does not have tonal discrimination.  There is about a half octave where I hear the tones, but they all sound like the same tone.  It only occurs if I listen to pure sine wave.  If I listen to something with harmonics (a natural sound) it does sound more or less normal, since my brain has figured out how to use the overtones to identify the correct fundamental.  In the left ear, no such problem.  My right ear has equal sensitivity to high frequencies.

In any case, I suspect this is congenital, but I never would have noticed it without doing this peculiar experiment.

[Scarpia]

Are you supposed to say when you hear the buzz? I hear it clearly at 20K.

It shouldn't sound like a buzz.  If you have the volume up what you may be hearing is broadband distortion from an overloaded transducer.

[Gurn Blanston]

I will start investing in stocks of hearing aid manufacturers ...   

The downside of that, Stuart, is that noise related hearing loss isn't correctable by hearing aids. The sort of age related loss that Scarpia is talking about above IS correctable. Since the baby-boomers are aging rapidly, that hearing aid stock might be a good investment after all, I just don't think you will end up with any of Steve Jobs' money.



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Listening to:
Le Concert des Nations / Savall - Hob 20 1 The Seven Last Words - Orchestral version pt 6 - Sonata V - Adagio

[DavidW]

Scarpia's test is interesting.  One becomes used to just using both ears, but one at a time might reveal differences.