Hearing degradation with age

I'm looking at some charts showing the effects of hearing degradation with age. It's depressing. And not just for older folks like me. (Sorry, these charts are in a book so I can't show them to you.)

Some harsh realities:

- you don't have to be in your 60's or 70's to have measurably worsened hearing. It starts in your early 30's. Actually, it starts in your 20's but it's initially too gradual to notice.

- it's worse for audio professionals, whose hearing starts to fade earlier and more dramatically than the general public. The charts don't say anything specifically about performing musicians, but I'm guessing they're considerably worse off than audio engineers.

- you also experience diminished dynamic range because as the threshold of hearing rises you also become more sensitive to loud sounds

- you lose the ability to discriminate between multiple sounds, which not only makes it hard to follow a conversation in a noisy room, but also makes it harder to perceive stereo separation in a mix. (This might not be altogether bad, because it makes you more sensitive to masking.)

- you will very likely suffer from tinnitus, an incurable condition that gets worse with age

Keep these points in mind the next time me or some other geezer is critiquing your song.

A little good news, though: our ability to judge frequency balance remains pretty good, at least up to where our hearing drops off altogether. This is because our hearing is amazingly adaptive, and we gradually accept a less-trebly reality as the norm and compare everything to that standard. Also, aside from the drop-off at the extreme high end, our response still pretty much follows the Fletcher-Munson curves throughout life. Consequently, we can still depend on our sense of spectral balance up to 10-12KHz or so. Above that, we should consult graphical displays for validation.

Last year I had the good fortune to sit next to an ear expert on a flight to Los Angeles. Great conversation! He said that new research suggests that contrary to long-held belief, some hearing degradation may actually be reversible. He offered me a tour of his department at the UW and gave me his email address -- but of course, I lost it. Man, would I love to pick that guy's brain some more.

I don't know if it's hearing loss or not but I can't tell the difference between ANY of the Slate Digital VCC consoles and a RAW file without them. I did a test file of the four consoles punched up in level and "drive" +3b and an level adjusted version of the raw file. Even a good friend (with pretty good ears, IMHO) on this forum picked the wrong sample as the raw one.

Is this thing working?

One. Two.

That would be me. 

The thing is you can hear the VCC working quite easily.  But since it is a very subtle effect, picking each console out in a blind listening test proved problematic to say the least.  I ended up picking the console emulation I use most (SSL) as the raw file because it was the cleanest of Bapu's bunch.  I hope he posts his test here on the forum for younger and better ears to try.  I also look forward to getting the full 64bit version soon as my Neve doesn't work at all and I've never really used the Trident.  So, as per usual, I was only half informed when I took the test.  Nevertheless, I failed miserably.  Post er up, Baps.  Let's see what the other VCC owners can do:-)

I'm not 50, yet... But I can still hear high-pitched sounds sometimes and it can be very annoying especially when most others don't seem to be affected by it.  The biggest issue I had with my hearing came from being stupid around loud sounds when I was younger.  Firecrackers, race car engines, cranked headphones, Who concerts and, eventually, stupidly loud underground clubs in Los Angeles (where I used to do lighting for).  Many left me with somewhat temporary ringing in my ears which led to deficiencies in the frequencies I needed most (like those used by the telephone).  I didn't lose the high-end, just parts of the middle.  Being smarter for the last two dozen years has brought back most of my hearing in those frequencies, but it so far hasn't made up for the damage I did during the first two dozen years.

I had no idea what tinnitus was, other than when people would describe it, and even then it seemed like no big deal to me. Then I had this chemo treatment, and now it will not stop. There are times I look around for the source of the hissing, like there has to be something near my head causing that noise. And it is either ear, all day and all night. Fortunately the volume falls off at times, sometimes for hours, but never completely gone.

The ear nose and throat doctor who diagnosed the cancer has an audiologist in his office, and she did a hearing test for me last month. Seems I have lost the very high end in both ears, but not enough to cause any problems, more like some one who has been around loud machinery all of his life.

The real crime is that there was no loss at all from age (55) up until then, in fact I was very pleased at the quality of my hearing, especially at the higher freq's.

No more...
 
And thanks for the article, saved it for later reference, and so the wife can read it (she has it bad)

Later
Albert 

I read on the back of a cold medicine box if you get a ringing in your ears to stop taking it immediately.

I keep seeing on TV a commercial for this gum you chew that stops tinnitus temporarily. Always wanted to try it but you can never believe those infomercials.

"Some day future medical students will study bizarre ancient medical practices such as chemotherapy and bloodletting and shake their heads in disbelief."

Reminds me of one of the Star Trek movies where they go back in time (the one with the whales maybe?). Bones passes this lady in the hallway of a hospital lying on a gurney and gives her a pill to cure some kind of terminal illness. She jumps off the stretcher and goes running through the hospital after she takes the pill.

Speaking of Star Trek, I was reading that William Shatner has Tinnitus really bad from an explosion while filming an episode of Star Trek. It happened on the set of the one where he's fighting a creature by himself and he makes gun powder to blow it up.

As I've mentioned earlier: Invest in hearing-aid industry.
According to some studies  about 30% of western youngsters already have a hearing damage due to portable players and loud ear-plug volumes. In 20-30 years there are more half-deaf people in the industrialised countries than ever.

Deafness makes one socially more isolated than blindness, some studies say.

I'm 17 and my left side hears less than the other. Or maybe it's ear wax? (Seriously)

SeveredVesper


Hey seriously,

I only have tinnitus when inside a turned-off car with absolutely no noise.

What's up with that?

There is a simple cure for that...

Bub... yeah that was the whales movie.... she needed a transplant I think... Bones muttered something about "barbaric" ....

I have tinnitus from bands and guns. In  my 20's I was around guns a lot, and 2 of the bands were very loud. I hear it constantly...day and night. It's only when I'm in a relatively noisy environment that the tinnitus is masked by the environment that I get relief. A hearing test shows a noticeable dip at the tinnitus frequency.

I have been to some audiologists and they say there is no treatment for it. It has been awhile since I visited them, I have also tried the stuff that the guy on TV who was supposedly a drummer advertises..... Quietus...... nahhhh nothing.... didn't even slow it down.

I would probably volunteer for any clinical research trials that would be held at Duke University of Medicine if they were doing research on this.

Herb, Albert, Bit,

There's been a lot of research on tinitus over the last few years. Once scientists discovered
what it actually is - over active neurons in the brain as a result from damage in the ear - it was predicted
potential treatments would follow soon.

The human trials may not work out, of course. But seeing as they are adapting a simple treatment already used
for epilepsy and depression, that has speeded up the process hugely. To quote:

"The initial set of human participants will have the electrodes attached to the left vagus nerve in their necks as part of a
short outpatient procedure."

Lots of other research going on too. Here's a (year old) summary from Deafness Research UK)

http://www.deafnessresear.../tinnitus-research.pdf

Fingers crossed....

( Mild tinitus here, but I know it's going to get worse )

Yes, it was the one where he was forced to fight a Gorn. 

Miguel, I suspect that hearing sensitivity normally varies between left and right ears. My left ear works better than my right and I always use the left ear when talking on the phone. My theory is that for 45 years I've mostly set up stage left, with the rest of the band to my right, and that's why my right ear is less sensitive. Don't know if that's true but it sounds good.

And yes, earwax can have a profound effect on hearing sensitivity and frequency response. Get that stuff compacted in there and it can cause effectively total deafness, something I have experienced and it scared the crap outa me.

Tinnitus is always there and everybody has it to some degree, but unless it's really bad it's normally masked by ambient noise. Most people are only aware of it in very quiet spaces. If you can hear it at your age (Miguel is 17, IIRC), that's not a good sign. Better start using earplugs at loud concerts.

@Bapu: Do you still have those test files?

I think it would be interesting to try them out here....

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As for myself, I have a bit of hearing loss in my left ear but still have my right hearing intact...as for tinnitus...not yet...