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Can't you just turn up the volume?

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Re: Can't you just turn up the volume?

#41

Post by Kluny »

Dwolb wrote: post #31
analog31 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that a simple way to eliminate the feedback issue is to separate the microphone from the speaker. Hearing loss runs in my family, so I've watched my relatives struggle with hearing aids, and I've decided that when it's time for me: 1) I will build it myself and figure out the details, to hell with the audiologists and their racket. 2. I will carry the microphone and amplifier in my shirt pocket. No mor…

I'm not a hearing aid expert but the microphone and earpiece may currently be tightly coupled because it has to be. That is, human ears are very sensitive to phase shifts and time delays. Placing the microphone in a location that is not your ear may throw off your hearing somewhat (possibly ability to locate from where a sound originated).

As a hearing aid user: my spatial awareness (as provided by sound information) is pretty much borked anyway. If I can't see where a sound is coming from I have no way of knowing what direction it's from or how far off it is. Even a small amount of hearing loss can cause this problem.

Re: Can't you just turn up the volume?

#42

Post by function_seven »

anigbrowl wrote: post #29

What’s the solution? Multi-Band Compression (MBC), a technique that’s been used by the $6 billion hearing aid industry to solve this specific problem. An MBC uses intelligent design instead of a one-size-fits-all method. With the right data about your hearing pattern, it can mash the full sound into your range so that you get all the information you need. Audio engineer here. That is patently untrue. MBC is a super-u…

Yeah, the article confuses things with the wrong definition of dynamic range, then goes on to explain MBC using the term "range" correctly.

MBC can "mash the full sound into your range" if "range" means dB range at each freq. band. But since the author previously (ill)defined dynamic range as a frequency-related term, the reader reads that passage and thinks he's referring to frequency shifting instead.

Re: Can't you just turn up the volume?

#43

Post by stefs »

Dwolb wrote: post #31
analog31 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that a simple way to eliminate the feedback issue is to separate the microphone from the speaker. Hearing loss runs in my family, so I've watched my relatives struggle with hearing aids, and I've decided that when it's time for me: 1) I will build it myself and figure out the details, to hell with the audiologists and their racket. 2. I will carry the microphone and amplifier in my shirt pocket. No mor…

I'm not a hearing aid expert but the microphone and earpiece may currently be tightly coupled because it has to be. That is, human ears are very sensitive to phase shifts and time delays. Placing the microphone in a location that is not your ear may throw off your hearing somewhat (possibly ability to locate from where a sound originated).

definitely. binaural hearing is very important. a single microphone in your shirt pocket would be a bad idea and not even close to the quality of hearing you can get with current hearing aids.

Re: Can't you just turn up the volume?

#44

Post by varunsrin »

anigbrowl wrote: post #29

What’s the solution? Multi-Band Compression (MBC), a technique that’s been used by the $6 billion hearing aid industry to solve this specific problem. An MBC uses intelligent design instead of a one-size-fits-all method. With the right data about your hearing pattern, it can mash the full sound into your range so that you get all the information you need. Audio engineer here. That is patently untrue. MBC is a super-u…

hey anigbrowl, OP here.

You raise some great points - it is indeed impossible to use an MBC to bring sounds back into a user's range of hearing if they have lost all sensibility at that particular frequency. However, the loss of hearing at a particular frequency is not binary - it tends to start with a reduction in dynamic range at that frequency, as the cilia start to get worn out / destroyed.

So if you have loss @ 3 KHz, you don't often completely lose all hearing, but your dynamic range which normally is 0dB -> 100 dB (over-simplification here) might now be 30 dB -> 100 dB.

What an MBC will do here is compress the range at that frequency band, so your 100dB of range is now 70dB of range.

Re: Can't you just turn up the volume?

#45

Post by bashinator »

Anechoic wrote: post #25
larrybolt wrote: post #2

This was an interesting read, but what to me personally is more interesting is how to prevent hearing loss over the years. I might be wrong on this, but I recall a hearing specialist advising me not to use earbuds at all, or at least limit the use to max 1 hour at a time. A dynamic headphones, such as the good old Superlux HD 681 would be "better" in the long term. (Not trying to advertise for that headphone, it's ju…

I might be wrong on this, but I recall a hearing specialist advising me not to use earbuds at all, or at least limit the use to max 1 hour at a time. The issue isn't necessarily about all "earbuds," the issue is that many earbuds (including the ones included with Apple iOS products) don't seal the ear canal very well, so a listener is exposed to outside sounds in addition to sounds from the player. Since the outside…

Exactly. With my Etymotics in-canal buds, I can set the volume on my music player to about 25-30%. With the stock buds or even non-isolating over-the-ear headphones, the same subjective loudness requires about 60-75% on the volume control.

Re: Can't you just turn up the volume?

#46

Post by mmmaaaxxx »

analog31 wrote: post #24
korethr wrote: post #15

This is nifty. My father has hearing loss and it's bad enough that not only does he use hearing aids, he is constantly turning them up until they feedback and start ringing. He doesn't hear the ringing, but I do, and I have some hearing damage of my own. And he wonders why his hearing aids go through batteries so fast. Their description of how hearing loss works gives me some ideas on how I can help my father manage…

It seems to me that a simple way to eliminate the feedback issue is to separate the microphone from the speaker. Hearing loss runs in my family, so I've watched my relatives struggle with hearing aids, and I've decided that when it's time for me: 1) I will build it myself and figure out the details, to hell with the audiologists and their racket. 2. I will carry the microphone and amplifier in my shirt pocket. No mor…

> 2. I will carry the microphone and amplifier in my shirt pocket. No more feedback.

This is how hearing aids used to be:

http://www.hearingaidmuseum.com/gallery/Transistor%20(Body)/...

Re: Can't you just turn up the volume?

#47

Post by hoggle »

larrybolt wrote: post #2

This was an interesting read, but what to me personally is more interesting is how to prevent hearing loss over the years. I might be wrong on this, but I recall a hearing specialist advising me not to use earbuds at all, or at least limit the use to max 1 hour at a time. A dynamic headphones, such as the good old Superlux HD 681 would be "better" in the long term. (Not trying to advertise for that headphone, it's ju…

Be aware that many prescription medications are ototoxic (e.g. Aspirin). I recently had a routine check-up of my hearing and at 31 my actual "hearing age" is supposedly 66 for higher frequencies - permanent hearing loss most likely brought on by Wellbutrin which I took for some weeks only (I've never been exposed to loud noises and never was much of a headphones user). Just putting it out there, be wary with prescriptions of Wellbutrin especially.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ototoxicity

Re: Can't you just turn up the volume?

#48

Post by dghughes »

My mother as a teenager listened to her transistor radio all the time, it was a new thing when she was young. She held it up to her ear and it was turned up very loud now she suffers from fairly profound hearing loss but only in a specific high range she can hear low bass normally.

If you talk to her and then turn on a tap to get a glass of water the conversation over, the fridge motor comes on conversation over, any non-verbal sounds is noise that obscures all words to her. "What?" is the response to nearly every word from anyone mouth has to be repeated twice except in a dead silent room. She listens to the TV on level 20 and it's very draining to everyone around the person.

But she won't get a hearing aid! She's 70 years-old but refuses to even discuss it. It's odd how if you say to a person who can't see they may need glasses it's OK but if you say to a person hard of hearing the may need a hearing aid it's like you said the most obnoxious thing ever to say to anyone.

Re: Can't you just turn up the volume?

#49

Post by varunsrin »

korethr wrote: post #15

This is nifty. My father has hearing loss and it's bad enough that not only does he use hearing aids, he is constantly turning them up until they feedback and start ringing. He doesn't hear the ringing, but I do, and I have some hearing damage of my own. And he wonders why his hearing aids go through batteries so fast. Their description of how hearing loss works gives me some ideas on how I can help my father manage…

Not a pedantic distinction at all - on a second read, I completely see the confusion, and I'm going to reword the article to separate the concepts of dynamic range (which is just a dB value) and dynamic ranges across a frequency spectrum more clearly.
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