ENT people, Audiologists, advice please? dBHL -->dB+ EQ?

[Thad E Ginathom]

Having gone to my ENT doc yesterday for a cleanout, which I seem to need regularly, and taken a hearing test whilst I was there, It looks like it is hearing-aid time for me.

That's one whole area of buying advice that's needed: I'm prepared to budget from one to two lakh for a pair, with the priority being sound quality, and especially not making music sound horrible.

What I'd like to know now, though, is something different. Given that I have an audiologist's report, how would I translate that, taking into account the natural loudness curve of human hearing, into a set of EQ settings for my PC/media-player that will restore accuracy to my perception of the music? How to translate dBHL to dB on the equalizer scale?

Comfort is easy, obviously just a matter of trying, but accuracy is another matter which, equally obviously, cannot be reproduced pragmatically.

Given that I am using a studio version of Linux, all the tools, from simple EQ to parametric, are available. I just don't know what to do with all those numbers!

 

[captrajesh]

Wish Suri was here. The old number which I have is no more valid I was told by someone who tried getting in touch with him.

Wait, there is one Entsurgeon here by the same handle. Why not ping him?

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Oh, thanks!

 

[reubensm]

again, with hearing aids, there are digital ones and analogue ones, so the debate continues...

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Well, the advantage of digital is the controllability and tunability. digital is good for those with selective-frequency hearing loss. What I have read, over the years, though, is that no hearing aids are particularly good at what any audiophile would call decent quality sound. Some of the analogue aids were better, but that's no good if the amplify everything when some frequencies can be heard normally without. Furthermore, they are made to enable people to hear conversation, not music, and they don't do much with the higher frequencies at all.

Anyway, it's now official that my hearing is crap . It seems to have become much worse over the past year or two. I must now be more interested in equalisers than flat-response speakers. Rs.40,000 on an amplifier with no tone control was probably a complete waste of money. Sad but true --- and when I hook some EQ into my PC playback, I'm rediscovering the sounds like the shimmering of symbols and even some whole percussion instruments, whose players, unnoticed, had given up on me and gone home! I now know why I can no longer hear the "air" that made me buy my headphones just a couple of years ago. It isn't the headphones that have changed.

Anyway, this is a tale of woe for a music lover, but it is hardly like life is over. Only two days ago I was in a state of bliss at a live concert, and it was an un-amplified one too. There is plenty to experience, still much that can be heard (especially in Chennai's over-amplified sabhas) and, of course, so much more to live music than simply hearing it. Of course, carnatic music is also fairly low on cymbal crashes and tinkly percussion

Let's look on the bright side: there's no point in spending any more money on hifi! But I can still continue my quest for better sound out of my computer because it is so easy to apply whatever EQ is necessary. Now I realise what I'm missing, I can start hearing it again . To anyone else, it will probably be shrill and horrible, but hey, there's headphones.

I've been using this online hearing test to help me find the levels. The result sounds shrill even to me: it will take a little doing to achieve comfortable adjustments.