Mosquito alarm equivalents?

[Peter Larsen]

"Normal range" == normal for a city dweller of your age who has worked as a blacksmith, it is an insurers defintion. Normal would imply that you had less than 20 dB threshold shift from 20 Hz to quite possibly 32 kHz. This based on some wording in some newspaper article about the results of audiology on jungle tribes in Africa that I recall reading 30+ years ago. "Normal range" just means that you don't have a valid insurance claim.

There is no good reason I am aware of - but I am unskilled - to assume that age related hearing loss is anything but simple noise damage.

Kind regards

Peter Larsen

[Huge]

There's a perfectly good reason. Why does your hair go grey, your skin lose its elasticity and your eyesight lose accommodation? Why shouldn't cochlear hair cells suffer age related degeneration also?

[Tim Downie]

I'm sure age is a factor but I do worry that we live in a world where our ears may be exposed to noises of considerably greater intensity than they evolved to cope with.

Tim

[Jeff Gaines]

If Mother Nature had foreseen the Spice Girls we'd have been fitted with built in ear plugs :-)

[Huge]

Turn your iPod down.

There's a whole generation of deaf people coming ...

[Eiron]

Rock concerts and bikes ruined the hearing of my generation. I thought Apple mp3 players in Europe had a lower output to protect young ears. I'm sure they are quieter than Motorhead was.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Like the rest of your body, they're evolved to work well for about

35 years.

[Jules Richardson]

Shouldn't be, other than possibly the usual suspects (Flash etc.). I ran it under Linux (FF 3.5) with no problems.

cheers

Jules

[Huge]

Naah, I tried it under Winblows and it went bang there, too.

Still doesn't work as of this morning. I even followed the links from the home page.

[tony sayer]

Well Mr Larsen I didn't intend to write a book on the subject, just more than less repeat what I was told by a very knowledgeable ENT surgeon.

Indeed a few simple experiments here in our workshop showed up with a few random subjects this quite marked frequency deviation which is normal, but it was interesting to note the discrepancy between one ear and the other with rising frequency. Not done of course with a specialist hearing set but in a rather well insulated room all other equipment switched to off and using a HP audio test set and a rather expensive pair of phones. And these were reversed on the subjects head and showed up the same variation.

Of course calibrating these to a fixed reference level is another matter but it was good enough. In one instance there was an ear to ear variation of 35 dB at 8 kHz in someone who thought his hearing was fine and just as it ought be, 'tho did say he has a job hearing some people these days and asks them to repeat again...

[tony sayer]

Works OK for me here?...

[tony sayer]

Well its I believe, used as a general test that you can do at home which may give some indication. I managed to get most all * right and the noise indeed did get worse and they said it would and in some hearing tests they use a noise marker on the one ear to make sure there is no one good ear making up for the other etc..

But it is this being unable to follow conversations in noisy places which is a general indicator of some hearing loss. Of course they do this better at a hospital which is where you should go if you believe you may have a hearing problem. What you do about that is another matter especially if your getting on a bit.

Still its one of them things where if its somewhat sodded up then best not to make it any worse;!...

We recorded the test and I had two younger persons present who wrote down the numbers claiming they were perfectly clear to them and both were in agreement!

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "dennis@home" saying something like:

"Server Error in '/' Application. The resource cannot be found."

Knackered in FF, but works ok in IE.

Handy enough test - but it informs me my hearing is 'within normal range' which is bollocks. I know for a dead cert my hearing isn't, having been impaired by too many years on bikes without ear plugs.

[Andy Burns]

Worked in FF on Linux for me.

Told me the same

I'd tend to say I've always been worse than average at hearing speech against background noise, but better than average at hearing quiet annoying noises against near silence.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Buggered for me too, now, but it did work. Ergo they have probably had too many uk.d-i-yers trying to use it, and have removed bits, or more likely, the microshit server has crashed.

[tony sayer]

Well hearing loss is by varied amounts, so some appx standard has to be given perhaps this test is the norm?..

So how did yer do?..

[The Natural Philosopher]

Oh, 12khz fine, 14Khz nada.

such a sharp cut-off I am suspicious of my audio setup.

Used to go to 19Khz in me yoof.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember tony sayer saying something like:

The last proper test I had was ten years ago and I doubt my hearing's healed up any. I recall white noise, various tones, frequency variations and each ear being tested seperately. Quite a drawn-out process, but really only seemed to take longer than it was.

[Bernard Peek]

We don't claim that it's a perfect test, it's just an indication. There are millions of people in the UK who don't realise that their hearing is poor enough to justify using a hearing-aid. If you are really worried about your hearing then get your GP to refer you to an audiologist.

There are two elements to hearing. There is sound detection and sound interpretation. Problems with either can make it difficult to understand speech.

[Brian Gaff]

I think we all have that problem. its supposed to miraculously improve your hearing when you lose sight, but its a falacy. Sometimes it can improve analysis, but only to a point.

With regard to frequencies of hearing. Its interesting to note that even when you cannot actually hear a high frequency, t is often perceived if it affects the sound in other ways, as it can on speakers for example. I guess its intermodulation effect you hear, caused by non linearities producing frequencies that you can hear.

Also, the same piece of music with, say a 19khz mpx filter in the chain definitely sounds less impressive, assuming a good recording in the first place. This could be due to the phase shifts in filters. I suppose.

One Rotel tuner I had had a wonderful spec on paper but sounded like a long distance telephone line.

Brian