PSA: Free Hearing Tests

[andrewsrea]

As a follow-up to the post "When the ears go" and given I've been getting back into recording, here are some online hearing tests I found useful:

This tests your 'social hearing'' - your ability to communicate in normal environments: https://www.resound.com/en-us/online-he ... /take-test

This tests your frequency range: https://www.onlinetonegenerator.com/hearingtest.html



Hint: don't cheat by cranking your headphones or speakers. Headphones will give a better idea of each ear's ability, but most headphones have a hard time reproducing above 10K.

I am 58 years old an have been exposed to sounds which should have significantly depredated my hearing. My results have surprised me:
Social Hearing: very minor hearing loss - above average for my age. I believe this corroborates what my primary doctor told me on my last physical exam - that I had great hearing for my age. Both ears seem even.

Frequency Hearing: not as well as I hoped. My hearing is exceptionally flat to 12.8Khz and rapidly dropped. I can hear after that to about 16Khz, by amplifying the volume. Even with assistance, I cannot hear above 16K. Both ears are pretty much the same, which I'd expect my right ear to be less, as I was typically 'stage right' with most of the loud sounds coming at me from stage left. Especially when playing smaller bars and having the drummer's cymbals 8 inches from my ear all night.

When I was 9 years-old, I could hear 22Khz and it hurt my ears. At 22 with 10 years of loud music (bands, drums, parties, concert's, etc.) , I could still hear 20Khz during an ear exam (which again, created a painful sensation in my ears). Now, not so good.

But knowing this will help me apply judgment to EQ'ing the frequencies >10K, which will be:
1.) Set it to sound good, then reduce by 3dB, then:
2.) Consult a young person to focus on the highs and provide further guidance.

I'd love to learn how you did on these tests!

[BatUtilityBelt]

Only a little past 10K, but on PC speakers so I really don't know. I do have some mild tinnitus. "Consult a young person" is a good default, but there are some super-humans out there.

I have a friend (Garry) who many years ago was listening to a freshly mixed track and he asked what that strange sound was. He described it, but we couldn't hear it. We pulled in other friends, none of whom could hear it, but I suspected I knew what it was. This was in the days of analog multitracking. I played him a rough mix of the master with the timecode track added into the audio, and he says "That's it, but now it's not just the top end". In a master, he heard and couldn't ignore the high end of a timecode track bled through onto another track, and nobody else could even sense it. I had to rerecord everything with the timecode track attenuated so as to not bleed across. For a few months, we called Garry Batman.

[mickey]

What?

Actually, I could not take the first test because my system blocks 3rd party cookies & the site told me to allow ALL cookies in order to proceed.

My freq response was rather flat to about 12,000 Hz and pretty well cut off at that point. Not bad considering I'm nearly 20 years older than you are Rob.

[Mossman]

I had no trouble with the first hearing test, and it said I have no hearing loss, but on the frequency test it dropped out at around 10kHz. I've had tinnitus since 2007, and back then I had "notch" hearing loss around the 17kHz range. I suspected it might have dropped some since then (and my tinnitus is worse than it was 14 years ago), but I didn't think it dropped that much.

[nomadh]

I thought high freq hearing was social hearing. At least when it comes to english. My Dr told me I had pretty good hearing except hi freq so I asked why can I not communicate with anyone in a loud bar and haven't since I was 21 even. He said all english is dependant on those hi tones to distinguish words. Without the Th K S T F sounds most words and nearly all english sounds like M b v d l and a bunch of vowels that get you nothing.
I think hawaiian might be a very good language for old people to be able to hear.

[Sinster]

12.5k ish is when I don't hear it.

[glasshand]

Speaking of this: MOTÖRHEAD's Phil Campbell Details His Severe Hearing Loss

I realize maybe it was uncool to wear earplugs and all, but...

"Yeah, we didn't bother with that. I think I tried those ear things for about half a tour, I wasn't getting the electricity to vibe through, so I quickly discarded them. But now we got off the road, I had to invest in a high-end hearing aid, but the thing is – I never wear it."

"But I went to the audiologist – this is a true story of two years ago – so basically he does all these tests, and he said, 'Well, a regular kind of average person's hearing would be on this certain chart.' I don't know what it was, plus 20 – and mine was minus 70. So, whatever, make what you will of that. It was profound hearing loss."

[andrewsrea]

What?

Actually, I could not take the first test because my system blocks 3rd party cookies & the site told me to allow ALL cookies in order to proceed.

My freq response was rather flat to about 12,000 Hz and pretty well cut off at that point. Not bad considering I'm nearly 20 years older than you are Rob.

You give me hope that I can maintain this level of hearing for the next 20 years!!

But your score is great! You were not a big electric guy right? Mostly acoustic?

[andrewsrea]

I thought high freq hearing was social hearing. At least when it comes to english. My Dr told me I had pretty good hearing except hi freq so I asked why can I not communicate with anyone in a loud bar and haven't since I was 21 even. He said all english is dependant on those hi tones to distinguish words. Without the Th K S T F sounds most words and nearly all english sounds like M b v d l and a bunch of vowels that get you nothing.
I think hawaiian might be a very good language for old people to be able to hear.

That is pretty cool to know!

[mickey]

What?

Actually, I could not take the first test because my system blocks 3rd party cookies & the site told me to allow ALL cookies in order to proceed.

My freq response was rather flat to about 12,000 Hz and pretty well cut off at that point. Not bad considering I'm nearly 20 years older than you are Rob.

You give me hope that I can maintain this level of hearing for the next 20 years!!

But your score is great! You were not a big electric guy right? Mostly acoustic?

Yep, mostly acoustic.

[Mossman]

Man, did I get a scare last night. I picked up my newly completed Strat (pics to come as soon as I take some that don't look horrible), and it sounded... flat. Almost like the strings were dead, or something... Lacking in harmonic overtones. Now I know our aural perception is inconsistent from day to day, and we've all have times when we pick up a guitar and it just doesn't sound right, but if you play another guitar, it sounds fine, and the first guitar will sound fine the following day. So I picked up another guitar, and that sounded dead too. I went through 5 guitars and none of them sounded right. I started thinking about this thread, and Joe Walsh, and felt some anxiety welling up inside me. The only thing that prevented me from falling into a full-on panic attack was that I realized I was pretty sleep deprived (I don't sleep as much as I should as a rule, and the night before I got less than 5 hours of sleep), and a little dehydrated too (all I had to drink all day was two cans of Arizona green tea), and I assured myself that I'd be fine the next day. But still, I was worried... and when I have anxiety, my tinnitus gets worse, which didn't help. I had to take some Melatonin to sleep last night.

The thing is; nothing else sounded different. In fact, I had been listening to music for a while before I picked up the guitar, and nothing sounded off, or muted. And I played some music after playing the guitars and it still sounded the way it should.

Anyway, I got about 6 hours of sleep and went to work, and drank more water, and everything was normal, but when I came home, I was almost afraid to pick up a guitar. I decided not to press myself on the issue, and went about my usual post-work routine, and eventually I picked up the Strat and plugged it in... and just as I predicted, it sounded way better than it did the night before. I played a couple of other guitars too, just to be sure, and they all sounded as they should.

I'm relieved, but I'm not unconcerned. If it ever gets to the point where all guitars sound like my guitars did last night for the rest of my life, then I'm not going to want to play anymore (at least not guitar... Maybe bass will be unaffected), and in the last 24 hours, I realized that losing that would be losing more than just the ability to play an instrument. I'd probably lose my interest in building guitars, and hanging out on guitar forums, and talking/reading about gear, watching guitar videos, etc. That would be a pretty sizeable chunk of my life gone, and I don't know how I would fill that void.

I guess I shouldn't worry about it. If that happens, there's nothing I can do to change it, or prevent it, and we are taught in recovery that we should accept the things we cannot change. I guess that's what I'll have to do. I just thought I'd feel better if I wrote about it.

[sabasgr68]

I missed this thread @andrewsrea I like these kind of tests.

Guess I´m not that bad at 53 and being exposed to high volumes. I´ve always liked to hear music at loud volume, with or without headphones, even until today - of course, today it´s only with headphones -. And at the factory that I used to work, with machines running, I didn´t always wore ear protection, so I was kind of concerned about some loss of hearing.

At least, according to these tests, I´m good.

Social Hearing: Almost no hearing loss.

Freq: I got to 20KHZ. But I couldn´t hear anything between ~15600 and 16600 hz, after that I could hear the tone to the end. What would that mean?


I wouldn´t like to loss my hearing or my ability to play, even though I´m always listening to music in my head, or even playing guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, maracas, tambourines, etc., all inside my head; but we all know it´s not the same.

[andrewsrea]

Freq: I got to 20KHZ. But I couldn´t hear anything between ~15600 and 16600 hz, after that I could hear the tone to the end. What would that mean?

Glad you liked it!

If you could hear to 20KHz and not between 15.6Khz and 16.6KHz, it could be that your headphones are not reproducing those frequencies. I could look up your headphones in my Sonarworks Reference 4 library to see the frequency response of your headphones. What is the model headphone you are using?

[sabasgr68]

Freq: I got to 20KHZ. But I couldn´t hear anything between ~15600 and 16600 hz, after that I could hear the tone to the end. What would that mean?

Glad you liked it!

If you could hear to 20KHz and not between 15.6Khz and 16.6KHz, it could be that your headphones are not reproducing those frequencies. I could look up your headphones in my Sonarworks Reference 4 library to see the frequency response of your headphones. What is the model headphone you are using?

Thanks!

I´ve been using this headphones - and I mean this pair of headphones, that I bought about 12 years ago -: Sony MDR-V150 Monitor Series Headphones.

According to the Amazon product page, its frequency range is 18hz - 22Khz. Yeah, look up this model to see if the reference matches or not.

Thanks!

[jtcnj]

this was interesting. cheap pc speakers; only heard to 11khz

[Mossman]

I missed this thread @andrewsrea I like these kind of tests.

Guess I´m not that bad at 53 and being exposed to high volumes. I´ve always liked to hear music at loud volume, with or without headphones, even until today - of course, today it´s only with headphones -. And at the factory that I used to work, with machines running, I didn´t always wore ear protection, so I was kind of concerned about some loss of hearing.

At least, according to these tests, I´m good.

Social Hearing: Almost no hearing loss.

no hearing loss.jpg


Freq: I got to 20KHZ. But I couldn´t hear anything between ~15600 and 16600 hz, after that I could hear the tone to the end. What would that mean?


I wouldn´t like to loss my hearing or my ability to play, even though I´m always listening to music in my head, or even playing guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, maracas, tambourines, etc., all inside my head; but we all know it´s not the same.

It could be that you have "notch" hearing loss. When I first got my hearing tested back when my tinnitus first manifested, I had hearing loss at around 16kHz and 17kHz, which my ENT said was pretty normal for my age, and considering I subjected my ears to a lot of loud music playing in bands and running sound (he was a musician too).

[sabasgr68]

I missed this thread @andrewsrea I like these kind of tests.

Guess I´m not that bad at 53 and being exposed to high volumes. I´ve always liked to hear music at loud volume, with or without headphones, even until today - of course, today it´s only with headphones -. And at the factory that I used to work, with machines running, I didn´t always wore ear protection, so I was kind of concerned about some loss of hearing.

At least, according to these tests, I´m good.

Social Hearing: Almost no hearing loss.

no hearing loss.jpg


Freq: I got to 20KHZ. But I couldn´t hear anything between ~15600 and 16600 hz, after that I could hear the tone to the end. What would that mean?


I wouldn´t like to loss my hearing or my ability to play, even though I´m always listening to music in my head, or even playing guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, maracas, tambourines, etc., all inside my head; but we all know it´s not the same.

It could be that you have "notch" hearing loss. When I first got my hearing tested back when my tinnitus first manifested, I had hearing loss at around 16kHz and 17kHz, which my ENT said was pretty normal for my age, and considering I subjected my ears to a lot of loud music playing in bands and running sound (he was a musician too).

Wow, never knew that could happen, that you could have a blind spot in your hearing.

[mickey]

My late father-in-law was a WW2 pilot and as a result spent many hours with two or four engines droning away and back then "What's ear protection?"
He had a dead spot in his hearing at 6000Hz that came back before 7000Hz.

[andrewsrea]

I´ve been using this headphones - and I mean this pair of headphones, that I bought about 12 years ago -: Sony MDR-V150 Monitor Series Headphones.

According to the Amazon product page, its frequency range is 18hz - 22Khz. Yeah, look up this model to see if the reference matches or not.

Sabas, your Sony MDR-V150 headphones lab tested by Sonarworks is attached below. Yes 18Hz to 22Khz, but not +/- 3dB. More like +6dB and -18dB. They really dive in the >10khz range.

The upper graph is your MDR's, the lower is my AKG K240 headphones for reference. I added them, as I agree with Sonarworks testing and have software that corrects the EQ and phase based on these lab tests - and the corrected sound is much better than uncorrected. So my ears say these curves are pretty much 'on.'

[sabasgr68]

I´ve been using this headphones - and I mean this pair of headphones, that I bought about 12 years ago -: Sony MDR-V150 Monitor Series Headphones.

According to the Amazon product page, its frequency range is 18hz - 22Khz. Yeah, look up this model to see if the reference matches or not.

Sabas, your Sony MDR-V150 headphones lab tested by Sonarworks is attached below. Yes 18Hz to 22Khz, but not +/- 3dB. More like +6dB and -18dB. They really dive in the >10khz range.

The upper graph is your MDR's, the lower is my AKG K240 headphones for reference. I added them, as I agree with Sonarworks testing and have software that corrects the EQ and phase based on these lab tests - and the corrected sound is much better than uncorrected. So my ears say these curves are pretty much 'on.'



Picture1.pngPicture2.png

Thanks, Rob!

Wow, that´s interesting. So, If I understood well, I´m losing some high freq range with these HPs, right?

Those are the best sounding HPs I´ve ever had/tried, as - relatively - cheap as they are. I got a nice bass and enough clear sounds.

[andrewsrea]

Wow, that´s interesting. So, If I understood well, I´m losing some high freq range with these HPs, right?

Those are the best sounding HPs I´ve ever had/tried, as - relatively - cheap as they are. I got a nice bass and enough clear sounds.

Your second statement is all that counts. If it sound good to you, don't sweat it.

If you need to perform critical listening or are wondering why you cannot hear certain high frequencies, this may explain it.

For me, I do my own tracking, mixing and mastering. My first recording experience was in 1976, real recording studio experience in 1978, operated a demo studio 1987 to 1995 and did countless sessions in a few pro studios in the 80's and 90's. Plus had a home studio since the mid-80's. It taught me to get the sound correct (how it will fit in the final production) before tracking (with old tech, you often had to commit immediately vs. in mix), then create a mix and master that convey the song the best to all listening scenarios. Reliably flat monitors and headphones to which you are very familiar with, is the secret to achieving this the quickest.

Which is why I spent a lot of time on my room acoustics and speaker + headphone correction. As a listener, my uncorrected monitor system (chart below show pre-correction) and AKG's were awesome. Correction allows me to hear more detail and phase issues.

[sabasgr68]

Which is why I spent a lot of time on my room acoustics and speaker + headphone correction. As a listener, my uncorrected monitor system (chart below show pre-correction) and AKG's were awesome. Correction allows me to hear more detail and phase issues.

Thanks, Rob.

This reminded me, you said something about you recording some of your music, didn´t you? Really looking forward to it.

[andrewsrea]

This reminded me, you said something about you recording some of your music, didn´t you? Really looking forward to it.

This is typically me. I get bursts of inspiration and stuff happens. Basically on my rerecording an older song, just to get into the swing of things again - I've gone dry on the remaining three track, all which require me to practice a bit more than I have been. My voice and fingers aren't complying with the ideas in my head yet. Also, my best friend with whom I had been collaborating, hasn't had the time to complete a few projects due to his work demands.

Also, I have been engaged in home chores which have to be accomplished before it gets hot in Missouri. And this is beating me up, moving literal tons of soil and rocks. I also had a ladder break two days ago and fell 25 feet. So, the past 5 weeks have been non-stop sprains, cuts and bruises. Mostly to my hands, forearms and elbow. So no drumming or extended guitar playing.

I shifted to recovering my old tapes, which included baking some multi-track reels that went well. However, I am finishing transferring cassettes (mostly store bought commercial music), while my Nackamichi MR2 deck is working well and the machines are set up. I might get to the multitrack by next week.

And last, I have had a flood of friends wanting guitars, amps, mixing console's and microphones fixed. Today, I have a Fender Vibrolux amp which needs repair and by request, is getting one of my channel mods. The owner is a friend from Virginia, who has a big gig in DC on 5/29 - so this is a priority task.

Knowing me, the recordings will pretty much happen all at once.

[sabasgr68]

This reminded me, you said something about you recording some of your music, didn´t you? Really looking forward to it.

This is typically me. I get bursts of inspiration and stuff happens. Basically on my rerecording an older song, just to get into the swing of things again - I've gone dry on the remaining three track, all which require me to practice a bit more than I have been. My voice and fingers aren't complying with the ideas in my head yet. Also, my best friend with whom I had been collaborating, hasn't had the time to complete a few projects due to his work demands.

Also, I have been engaged in home chores which have to be accomplished before it gets hot in Missouri. And this is beating me up, moving literal tons of soil and rocks. I also had a ladder break two days ago and fell 25 feet. So, the past 5 weeks have been non-stop sprains, cuts and bruises. Mostly to my hands, forearms and elbow. So no drumming or extended guitar playing.

I shifted to recovering my old tapes, which included baking some multi-track reels that went well. However, I am finishing transferring cassettes (mostly store bought commercial music), while my Nackamichi MR2 deck is working well and the machines are set up. I might get to the multitrack by next week.

And last, I have had a flood of friends wanting guitars, amps, mixing console's and microphones fixed. Today, I have a Fender Vibrolux amp which needs repair and by request, is getting one of my channel mods. The owner is a friend from Virginia, who has a big gig in DC on 5/29 - so this is a priority task.

Knowing me, the recordings will pretty much happen all at once.

LOL

Well, just be sure to tag me when it happens all at once and you finally post it here in the Jam Room.

Oh, and take care, man, falls at "our age" are not funny - and actually, dangerous -.

I guess it is great that you´re active on music related things.