[78-L] A doubt about EQ curves

[David Lennick]

And then there are the tapes of old time radio, duplicated by collectors whose 
hearing is shot to hell, full of tape squeal that they couldn't detect (hell, a 
syndicator brought me a reel of 456 to play in my living room and he couldn't 
hear the squealing in real time).

I can still His Master's dog whistle, for whatever that's worth.

dl

On 10/17/2011 6:35 PM, Michael Biel wrote:
> From: Jeff Lichtman<jeff at swazoo.com>
>> Loss of hearing in the high frequencies happens to almost everyone,
>> but you can minimize it by limiting exposure to loud noises.
>
> It is not just high frequencies, it often is low mid-range -- right in
> the middle of the range needed to understand speech.  That is what nerve
> deafness is.  People speaking are audible to you -- you can hear them --
> they are just not intelligible.  The addition of noise such as when you
> are in a crowded room, riding in a car -- or background music in a film
> or musical accompaniment in a performance -- can make it that much more
> difficult to understand speech you can hear.
>
> So just because you can still hear high frequencies such as horizontal
> deflection in cathode ray tube TVs doesn't mean you have not had hearing
> loss in frequencies LOWER than that.
>
> I KNOW my hearing is bad now, but it used to be fantastic.  I could hear
> a TV's horizontal deflection 100 feet away around a corner.  But I have
> had tinnitus since an ear infection, and mechanical fuzziness since an
> accident (a sound effects guy shot a gun two inches away from one of my
> microphones while I was wearing headphones -- the shithead.  He had
> probably already deafened himself decades ago with those goddamn guns.
> Last year another idiot sound effects clod just walked into a room and
> shot off a gun without telling anybody he was going to do it.  I yelled
> at him for 15 minutes and tried my best to get him thrown out, but he
> will never shoot off a sound effects gun anywhere again for any purpose.
>   There are better ways to get gunshot effects.)
>
> Some people are genetically more prone to hearing problems.  How
> were/are your parents' and siblings' hearing.  My father had severe
> nerve deafness from decades owning a yarn factory with criminally loud
> machines.  My mother wasn't far behind, and my sister has worn hearing
> aids for 20 years and she is just 3 1/2 years older than me.  My
> daughter ALWAYS wears hearing protection at concerts and tries to
> remember to do it in the subway.  She knows she walks out of concerts
> being the only one who can hear.
>
> RECORDEING STUDIO CONTROL ROOMS ARE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEARING.  As the
> day and evening goes on, the monitor volume goes up and up and up.  If
> you come in the next day with the settings the same, the first thing
> anyone does is reach for the monitor level pot and turn it down.  Same
> thing in your car, right?!  If your SPL in your control room is 95 dB or
> above, you are screwed.
>
> Getting hearing tests is not always helpful for learning your high
> frequency limits because most testing is for intelligibility, not
> audibility, and they rarely test above 8 KHz.  You have to ask for
> higher frequency testing, and sometimes their equipment cannot really do
> it properly.
>
> As my pal George Blacker's hearing deteriorated he became very
> depressed.  Fortunately he talked about it to others and did not keep it
> bottled in.  Sorta like I am doing now.
>
> Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com
>
> _______________________________________________