Hearing Aids [My hearing test results]

I promised to share the results of my hearing test that I had at the Mayo Clinic last week. As suspected, my hearing is down at the higher frequencies.
 
I took a picture of the Audiograph with my iPhone. The Audiograph test is normally performed from 125Hz to 8000Hz, but I asked him to perform the test up to 20KHz. 
 
The Audiograph readings were:
 
Test Tone Frequency, in Hz            Hearing Threshold Level, in dBHL     Hearing Loss
              250                                              19                                      Normal
              500                                              25                                      Normal
              1K                                               35                                       Mild
              2K                                               45                                       Mild
              3K                                               70                                       Moderate (damage from 40 Yrs of playing in my band)
              4K                                               70                                        " 
              6K                                               70                                        "
              8K                                               55                                        Mild
 
Above 10KHz I'm essentially deaf. This is somewhat typical for someone my age (71) and playing in the band certainly didn't help!
 
Hearing damage from playing music either live or recorded, usually shows up as a dip around 4000 Hz, since the typical ear has a peak around that frequency. (Mother Nature designed it that way since a baby's crying is at the frequency) .
 
Hearing aids are normally designed to help with hearing voice and to a lesser degree for music so Mayo Clinic can't help with a hearing aid for us musicians. For those who don't want to use a hearing aid, the numbers above will degrade by 20dB for every 10 years. Something to look forward to. Being young is for whimps!
 
The Doctor was very helpful and went into great detail since he knew I was an electonics engineer and musician. He gave me the name of Marshal Chasin who is an expert in the field of hearing loss and hearing aids for musicians. If you google his name you come up with a ton of info on the subject. 
 
From reading some of his info, I didn't realize how much a 3dBSPL difference in loudness can affect hearing loss.
 
"12) So what are the factors affecting hearing loss? The two main factors are how intense the music or noise is, and how long one has been exposed to it. We know from research that prolonged exposure to 85 decibels (dB) or greater, over time will cause a permanent hearing loss. A level of 85 dB is not particularly loud - a dial tone on a telephone is about that! Even though it is not loud, it is intense enough to be damaging. But, it also depends on how long you are exposed to it. Research has found that the maximum exposure each week should be less than 85 dB for 40 hours. This is identical to 88 dB for only 20 hours. That is, for each increase of 3 decibels, you can only be exposed for half as long. Saying it differently, for every 3 decibel increase, your exposure doubles. Other less significant factors are your liking of the music, general health, and hereditary factors."
 
Interesting!
 
I'll be doing some more research on hearing aids for musicians and will post my findings.
 
Hope this helps some...
 
Walt

This is a subject that has interested me since I became aware that my hearing had degraded to the point where I started to notice.
 
I'd assumed that if it ever got bad enough to require hearing aids that that would be the end of my musical activities. That hasn't happened yet, and I'm very protective of my ears in hopes it won't. In researching ear plugs for musicians, which I am now using on stage, I was surprised to discover how little it takes to cause permanent damage. Anything over 80 dB is damaging over time, and no band plays that quietly!
 
But it seems there are solutions for hearing-impaired musicians, although they're expensive. Hearing aids have a signal chain. You've got a microphone and A/D converter, for starters. High-end units will have a 24-bit ADC rather than the standard 16-bit, which allows them to handle louder sounds without distortion. Microphones are very flat, similar to measurement mikes. A parametric equalizer then adjusts gain based on which bands need help and which ones do not. 
 
The problem is that those filters are set to favor those frequencies most important to speech recognition, making music sound like it's coming in over a telephone. In my reading, I kept running across the name Marshall Chasin, an audiologist who's written a lot on the subject. (Example). There is also some good information at the H.E.A.R. site (example), the organization founded by musicians for promoting hearing-loss education.
 
 

Some may find it surprising that these problems concern the players of classical, acoustic instruments as well.
The sound levels the musicians are exposed to in a symphony orchestra are about equal to those of a rock band.
 
I was surprised to hear my doctor say my (still) smallish  hearing loss seems to be of the aging type, not caused by my music hobby. I do have some practically continuous tinnitus, which made me think the noise damage is the only possible explanation to the hearing loss.