Please Help! Hearing Down 50dB at 8K Hz

I'm not expecting to achieve 20/20 hearing. But being a sailor, the last straw was when I found the Christopher Cross cd in the $1 bin, played it, and could no longer hear the bells on "Sailing". Life is too short. I want to try to recover some of my hearing loss through technology.

I have no trouble with normal conversation. Tests show normal at 2k, down 30 at 4k, and down 50 at 8k.

The AVR in our living room has an equalizer, but will give me only about a 15 db boost. My first question is whether a tweeter would be able to handle that much boost if I were able to find an equalizer that could apply that much boost?

I've also ben reading the hearing aid posts and 'programmable' headphone posts with interest.

Thanks.

p.s. NEVER believe any review I do on hardware or masterings.

 

I've no solution to offer, but also have a massive notch at 4-8kHz on my audiogram. I requested a test when I couldn't clearly hear the coins jangling when listening to Money on Dark Side of The Moon. Simply boosting the affected frequencies by your hearing deficit will not fix the problem as your own hearing mechanisms are already working overtime to compensate for the loss and are not as predictable as one might want.

A 30dB boost at those frequencies would fry a tweeter and / or amp, and secondly, you may well find tbat it aggravates any tinnitus you get at the affected frequencies. Personally, I keep the volume down (look after what is left) and am VERY careful about hearing protection at gigs. When headphone listening I use closed back +- noise cancelling headphones which allow me to lower the volume with a gentle 3dB lift at 4-8kHz which works for me.

 

Fellas no offense but it would really help if you stated your age somewhere (profiles ?) for us ¨youngsters¨ not to be alarmed. I'm 55, my audition is still good, but I don't expect to keep it this way in say 10-15 years

My mother had deep hearing loss at 70 and never listened to minute of loud music in her life. My dad, OAH, discharged firearms without hearing protection for decades and he died at 71 with perfect hearing. Go figure

 

If you go listen to a concert now, you'll be bringing along your ears too. Your brain has adapted to the physical hearing loss like your brain filters out the blind spot in each eye where the optic nerve is attached. Unless you have perfect memory of the recording and need to relive that teenage excitement at levels that would fry what hearing you have left, I wouldn't worry about it.

 

I think hearing loss is much different than vision. "Hearing loss" may not be an accurate term. If I knock down every bar on the equalizer to -16, raise the highest frequency to +8, and put my ear right next to the tweeter, I can hear those bells as clear as....a bell.

I'm convinced that an equalizer with a huge adjustment range would work, as long as I didn't damage hardware. So, as I asked, if I could find such an equalizer, is it true that I would damage hardware?

 

You would need very efficient and robust speakers, such as Klipsch towers. Those horns can take everything you throw at them. But.....as others posters have pointed out, you'd be frying what's left of your audition in no time. Any amp can take the treble overload no problem.

 

20dB of power is 100x the wattage. 40dB is 10000x the wattage.

Certainly you can crank up a tone control at 10kHz +20dB with whatever circuitry is needed to do so (or process digitally), but you can quickly exceed what you speakers and amp are capable of. More importantly, you will likely exceed the threshold of pain in order to detect signals at frequencies well into your high frequency loss, and pain levels = hearing damage.

 

I'd not be concerned with your stereo gear. You can't hear it. You should first address your hearing. Investigate some tunable hearing aids. There must be some swank new models with digital EQ that are affordable. Once that is done well, you'll enjoy better hearing everywhere and not irritate others trying to overcome your burden.

I had a neighbor with hearing loss and when he and his wife would watch TV together, there would be a battle of volume until he got a pair of headphones where he could crank it up to his liking while she could listen to the direct TV sound at normal levels. Solving a problem like that opens up other options for you and best suits your friends and family.
-Bill

 

I don't think I agree with this, since that is the way hearing aids work. They amplify sound. I've never heard that using hearing aids will ruin whatever hearing one has left.

 

I watch tv at normal volumes. In fact, most of the time that I'm watching tv by myself, if someone comes into the room, they ask me to turn it up.

There are threads on tunable hearing aids. That's what I may end up with. But once I go to hearing aids, I'm listening to the little speaker in the hearing aids, not the speakers. That's why I'd like to change the sound coming out of the speakers. I enjoy the bass through high mids of my speakers.

Don't worry about guests. Living room system will remain normal.

 

A very powerful amp and pro speakers can stand the treble overload you're looking to achieve.

 

Remember that I am talking about only boosting frequencies above 4 kHz. I'd like to have your input, but your statement about exceeding the threshold of pain makes me believe that you didn't quite understand my question. There will be no pain, since I merely want to duplicate what a tunable hearing aid does.

 

NAD 7175PE and B&W CM6 S2 (still under warranty)

 

I believe that you are making an assumption there. What the hearing aid should do is to correct the frequency imbalance in your ear, not change the sound of your system. So what you will be doing, if it's done right, is restoring your hearing to an earlier, more heathful state where you hear full range again from any source. Only the missing highs will be boosted, so that they become audible as they once were for you, not the lower frequencies, which you can hear directly. In short, you will be adding the EQ post speakers but it effectively solves the same problem in the same way from your perspective. The benefit is that you take this new, better you, everywhere you choose to go.
-Bill

 

Your hearing loss (yes, it's an unpleasantly realistic term) likely mimics the "70 year olds" curve:



Contrast to the young person's threshold of hearing vs threshold of pain:



Exceeding the threshold of pain is a physiological response from overstimulation of the cochleal hair fibers that warns you of unsafe levels, you can see that this threshold mirrors sensitivity somewhat. However, like a paraplegic that can't detect the cigarette dropped on their lap, those boosted high frequencies to which you are less sensitive can cause further overexposure damage to remaining sensitivity you have. Guidelines below still apply; moderate your playback levels and see if your EQ'd stereo makes a teenager want to leave the room before you listen too long:

 

You're right. I may be making wrong assumptions. I assume that the hearing aids would have a mic that would pick up the entire frequency range, modify the sound with an equalizer, then rebroadcast the entire, modified range using a tiny speaker. I don't see how I would be able to hear 20 to 2kHz directly from my speakers and only 2kHz and up through the tiny speaker in the hearing aid.

 

Well, the ear canal should not be sealed and the only sounds boosted by the hearing aids will be the high frequency ones that you cannot hear now. At least that is my assumption. I don't see where anything below the frequencies needed to be boosted would even pass through the hearing aid.
-Bill

 

Nuts! 59. Very few concerts, no loud music, no guns. Bad hearing genes. Luckily, I have the body of a 40 year old.

My hearing is better than the average 60 year old chart up to 2 kHz, then drops rapidly. I guess that explains why I am able to watch tv at such low volumes.

 

There I go again. I assumed that the ear canal WOULD be sealed by the hearing aid.

 

I can tell you that a cheap pair will boost a broader range of frequencies (and you may need that to a lesser degree but not really desire it). I have a brother-in-law who is a Vietnam infantry vet and he has quite a bit of hearing loss. He has a set and can adjust the level to suit his interest, ie turn down the wife, crank up the fun. He complains about wind noise and background noise being amplified so that it doesn't help intelligibility as much as he'd like, but states that its better than being deaf. He will also sometimes wince and remove his aid when it begins to squeal from feedback due to too much gain. So a high quality, finely EQ programmable set is the best bet. You can always choose when to wear and when not to wear or when to increase or decrease levels through them.
-Bill

 

Hearing acuity is in large part due to genetics. I lucked out. Both of my parents had excellent hearing into their 80s.

50db is drastic, but this jibes with what I posted in another thread, that it is simply the intensity of certain frequencies that goes down. If you bring that back up, all is good, except, it would be out of balance with everything else.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by this. My goal is to boost each frequency by the amount of it's deficiency.

But, back to the original question. Is there total agreement that IF I could find an equalizer that would boost 4kHz by 30 db and 8kHz by 50 db, my existing amp and/or speakers would fry? If not, could someone name brands/models that could handle this.

 

Instead of eq, you can amend your high frequencies. Let's say your speakers have a sensitivity of 90dB/w/m. Add a pair of supertweeter arrays with 97dB/W/m sensitivity in parallel or on Speaker B (with built-in crossover ~4k by design) and you've added 10dB to your high end response with more power handling at the same volume setting.



I linked an easiest-to-use example (using Chinese knock-offs of classic Motorola tweeters); there are other horn-loaded pa compression drivers that have even higher sensitivity, but would need a crossover to match their ability and your needs.

 

Many people have absolutely no idea that moderate-volume sounds over very long periods of time can have just as damaging of an effect on your hearing as do some very loud sounds over short periods of time. All sorts of environmental noise pollution which isn't super loud, but which persist constantly will eventually take its toll on you hearing.

The good news is that there are steps which can be taken to minimize further hearing losses once you begin to recognize these effects. Powerful antioxidants like NAC have been shown to limit damage from noise exposure to some degree. And keeping hearing protection with you at all times which you can put into your ears at a moment's notice is a very smart practice for anyone who cares about your hearing IMO.

Personally I'm going to some extreme measures to protect all that remains of my hearing because I want for the day that I have to use a hearing aid to be far in the future.