Testing one's hearing

Decadent_Spectre

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Does anyone happen to know of any places in India (preferably Kolkata) where one can have their individual ear's frequency response mapped accurately across as wide a bandwidth as possible? I would appreciate any inputs anyone has on this.
 
Any ENT clinic or hearing aid centre will do audiometry. In my experience, it is sufficient for normal ENT diagnosis and hearing aid prescription and does not extend into very high frequencies. However, if you talk to an audiometrist about your requirements, they might be able to cooperate.

Online facilities such as audiocheck and Hearing Test Online will help, if not with complete objective accuracy.
 
I had got my ears checked at Safdarjung Hospital. I was not too impressed with the test. It was just frequency sweep test where the result of the test depended on what I said I could hear. You can go to any good hospital to get such a test done. Some high-end private hospitals may have better equipment and might do such a test with better objectivity.

What do you need it for? If it is for your personal satisfaction purpose as to confirm whether as an avid music lover are you really able to hear all frequencies or not, or if you are not certain if you can/cannot hear certain frequencies, a self test using a computer, test files from Internet and a full-range portable rig is the way to go.
 
Was it like this?...

for the usual test, which I have had in UK and in Chennai, you sit in a sound insulated box wearing headphones. You cannot see the controls the operator is using, and you indicate by a push button (or by a hand signal) when you hear something. Only the operator knows what frequency and at what volume, and into which ear, the sound is. If your responses are ambiguous, they will backtrack. They also do some test of bone-transmitted hearing.

I expect there are degrees of system accuracy and operator competence, and there may be more sophisticated ranges of equipment, but is it possible to dispense with the fact that it is the test subject saying when they can hear? I wonder if there is any equipment so sophisticated that that it can tell us when we are hearing something, and at what level? That would be quite something!

(Hmmm... audiophiles would probably hate the very idea! :lol: )
 
I am aware of the tests described and have gotten them done but I feel they are not accurate.

The reason I want the test done is simple, I recently came across some of my old tests and incorporated the test results into my DSP to correct the desired frequency response accounting for my individual ears frequency response and this helps a lot. I was hoping an accurate detailed test might enable me to EQ a custom curve that perfectly suits each ears frequency response and improve the sound further.
 
Audiometry will not give any benefit for this purpose.

If I have a dip at 1000Hz then I will hear live music with the same dip and reproduced music also at the same dip. For that matter my world would become 'normal' for me with that dip without me knowing it. I will still be able to tell which loudspeaker comes closer to the real thing or which one sounds better among many.

Another aspect is - one should always buy the system which one likes to hear ! Everyone's audiometry has some peaks and dips and they vary from person to person.

Talking of testing one's hearing, I suggest looking up the biography of Beethoven about the later part of life !
 
Audiometry will not give any benefit for this purpose.

If I have a dip at 1000Hz then I will hear live music with the same dip and reproduced music also at the same dip. For that matter my world would become 'normal' for me with that dip without me knowing it. I will still be able to tell which loudspeaker comes closer to the real thing or which one sounds better among many.

Another aspect is - one should always buy the system which one likes to hear ! Everyone's audiometry has some peaks and dips and they vary from person to person.

Talking of testing one's hearing, I suggest looking up the biography of Beethoven about the later part of life !


Typical audiometry as described above can have limited usefulness for my purposes, an accurate chart is required for best results.

We will hear everything with the imperfections inherent in our ears response however correcting for them via DSP does significantly improve the sound.
 
The reason I want the test done is simple, I recently came across some of my old tests and incorporated the test results into my DSP to correct the desired frequency response accounting for my individual ears frequency response and this helps a lot. I was hoping an accurate detailed test might enable me to EQ a custom curve that perfectly suits each ears frequency response and improve the sound further.

That's interesting, because I have attempted to do the same thing using data from an audiometry test.

I appreciate Shivam's point of view that what we hear is our normal, but the problem is that, for some of us, there comes a point in life where what we hear is simply not all there is to be heard. I was quite shocked by my last hearing test, and when I tried out EQ to up the frequencies beyond my sad 8k rolloff, I discovered how different the symbols sounded, how there were some high tinkles I'd simply stopped hearing without realising it.

I don't know how much a more accurate chart would help, but I soon found out that it is not a case of dialling in decibels as shown on it. It doesn't work that way; the scales don't match. I'd love to get some info on this from a hifi ENT guy! I'm hoping to discuss it, at least, with an engineer friend who at least understands audio technology, but don't see him often.

The biggest problem with high, or selective, frequency loss is that we can no longer trust ourselves to define "flat." Doing it by numbers is an attempt to find that foundation level.

In practice, until I get technical advice, I have found that all I can do is adjust the EQ to what I'm comfortable with, and accept that I'll never again be able to give a serious opinion on neutral sound.
 
That's interesting, because I have attempted to do the same thing using data from an audiometry test.

I appreciate Shivam's point of view that what we hear is our normal, but the problem is that, for some of us, there comes a point in life where what we hear is simply not all there is to be heard. I was quite shocked by my last hearing test, and when I tried out EQ to up the frequencies beyond my sad 8k rolloff, I discovered how different the symbols sounded, how there were some high tinkles I'd simply stopped hearing without realising it.

I don't know how much a more accurate chart would help, but I soon found out that it is not a case of dialling in decibels as shown on it. It doesn't work that way; the scales don't match. I'd love to get some info on this from a hifi ENT guy! I'm hoping to discuss it, at least, with an engineer friend who at least understands audio technology, but don't see him often.

The biggest problem with high, or selective, frequency loss is that we can no longer trust ourselves to define "flat." Doing it by numbers is an attempt to find that foundation level.

In practice, until I get technical advice, I have found that all I can do is adjust the EQ to what I'm comfortable with, and accept that I'll never again be able to give a serious opinion on neutral sound.

My audiometry results are not accurate but were in the ball park so to speak which was very good starting point, after that of course much of it was based on guess work which was based on my knowledge gleaned over the years combined with trial and error to verify if my guesses were right.

I will add that the goal of improving the sound lay less in achieving high frequency response but rather in improving imaging and sound balance. I do not know about most but my ears have grown especially sensitive to spectral imbalance between the ears and though I have measured and matched the frequency response to both ears from both speakers there is still the question of differences between the ears and of course room asymmetries. This is why I was looking to accurately map each individual ear's response.

So far my efforts have proven fruitful though laborious. Of course I will keep at it until I am perfectly satisfied with every aspect of my system.
 
Decadent_Spectre, I can understand that you want to leave no stone unturned to optimize your system performance. But I have a simple question to ask you.

Why would you prefer to setup your system based on a medical report over manually tuning it seeing how you like it to sound the best?
 
Decadent_Spectre, I can understand that you want to leave no stone unturned to optimize your system performance. But I have a simple question to ask you.

Why would you prefer to setup your system based on a medical report over manually tuning it seeing how you like it to sound the best?

I don't tune it solely by the medical report if you carefully read my posts, rather they are helpful tools to aid in the setup process.

While subjective personal satisfaction is the end goal, science and objectivity are the tools necessary to achieve this goal, for this the measured response of each ear would be very helpful.
 
Why would you prefer to setup your system based on a medical report over manually tuning it seeing how you like it to sound the best?

For me, I have already mentioned the answer to that. With HF loss, I can no longer objectively assess flat. I would prefer to have a flat frequency response as a starting point, at least in theory. From that point, if needbe, the sound could be warmed or cooled or tweaked according to type of music and how I feel that day, but it would be nice to know where flat actually is.

We could call this high-tech, hi-fi hearing aid!
 
For me, I have already mentioned the answer to that. With HF loss, I can no longer objectively assess flat. I would prefer to have a flat frequency response as a starting point, at least in theory.

And despite that start point you can't hear the flat because of your HF loss. Then why start with what you can't hear? Isn't it more fruitful to adjust the knobs and leave it where it sounds the best? I mean how are you going to judge if the report says a 8dB dip at 16.7k. Can you hear it? No? Then why bother with the start point?

I would prefer to have a flat frequency response as a starting point, at least in theory. From that point, if needbe, the sound could be warmed or cooled or tweaked according to type of music and how I feel that day, but it would be nice to know where flat actually is.

The entire Hifi industry (100s of thousands of people worldwide) have spent their lifetime spending billions in R&D and have not been able to figure out and declare conclusively where the flat is. I am glad to know a medical report will allow you to learn where it is.

But you have said at least in theory. That implies you admit being aware this is not going to be helpful in practice.
 
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Maybe it's a kind of audiophile plaything, and maybe it will not work out in practice. However, as audiophile playthings go, at least it has some degree of measurability. You could probably guess that I would have no time at all for some sort of idea like, HF hearing loss? try silver cables! :lol:

In my humble experience, it is quite difficult to get EQ right --- or even comfortable. Perhaps that's why sound engineers need training and experience :eek: :). My in-the-end current status is that I have turned it down quite a lot from what numbers might have suggested, to a quite subtle rising curve above 1k, which recovers at least some of the brightness in the music without making it harsh.

As well as a project, it is also very much a learning exercise. People talk about frequency response; they even recommend sampling rates that take it way above what any human can actually hear, but I suspect that only a few of them have ever looked at charts, played with EQ, etc, and found out what actually happens at what frequencies, and how the majority of the sounds that make music actually happen at relatively low frequencies.

With roll off at 8k, I am deaf enough to find phone calls difficult, and to find conversation against a background noise impossible --- but I don't actually miss that much music. Enough to make a difference, yes: the same blurring of words happens in vocal music as in conversation, cymbal swish is missing, and the thing that we call "air" is not there at all. There may not be much in those higher frequencies, but that is not to say that it does not count.

Decadent_Spectre, excuse me if this is a bit if a hijack, but I hope it comes under the same heading in talking about music, hearing, frequency range and possible corrections.
 
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