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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?

#51

Post by codezero »

dghughes wrote: post #48

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…

I bet you'd find a lot of older people also unwilling to get new glasses or a stronger prescription. All the same, the taboo likely exists because it's common for young people to have myopia, but not poor hearing, so it's always OK to have glasses and never OK to need hearing augmentation.

I really hope this taboo goes away as new generations get more and more comfortable with augmenting their senses.

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

#52

Post by carlob »

I once went to a 3h long blackboard talk given by James Hudspeth [1] on the physics of hearing.

It was one of the most fascinating things I've ever heard: it turns out that not only the cochlea performs a Fourier transform of the sounds we're hearing, but it can also selectively amplify some frequencies, by vibrating the very same hair that detect the sounds.

Sometimes the mechanism that amplifies some sounds goes wrong and that's why sometimes old dogs seem to emit a high pitched sound from their ears, and also the cause of some forms of tinnitus.

If you have some time to kill do go read the wikipedia pages of the cochlea and hair cells, it's really fascinating stuff!

[1] http://www.rockefeller.edu/research/faculty/labheads/JamesHu...

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

#53

Post by ssalazar »

tjradcliffe wrote: post #28
jeremysmyth wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. "Dimensions" is the right word, because they are three orthogonal scales along which musical notes can be measured[1]. The author could also have suggested timbre and other possible dimensions, but the three stated apply to all sound, including (importantly) sine waves, the simplest type of sound. [1] Technically, frequency is a function of time too (and timbre a function of the interaction of multiple frequencie…

Technically there are two complementary sets of dimensions: time and amplitude vs frequency and phase. Both are complete encodings of the waveform. The article is extremely muddled from a technical point of view. When dealing with perceptions it is extremely important to distinguish physics and physiology. In optics we have radiometric (physical) vs photometric (perceived) values: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photom…

> Technically there are two complementary sets of dimensions: time and amplitude vs frequency and phase. Both are complete encodings of the waveform.

Minor note, the "frequency and phase" is actually frequency and complex amplitude, which encompasses both phase and scalar amplitude as we think of it intuitively.

In the mathematical theory there is also provision for complex amplitude in the time-domain, but this is rarely needed in practice (and never found in real-world signals).

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

#54

Post by anigbrowl »

varunsrin wrote: post #44
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 @…

I get what you're aiming at, and I applaud what you're trying to do - I just think that you've over-simplified a complex topic, to the point of creating quite a bit of confusion, going by this thread. To quote Einstein, “Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

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

#55

Post by carlob »

a2kadet wrote: post #6

> "Sound expresses itself in three dimensions: time (seconds), volume (decibels) and frequency (Hertz)." Is anyone else as irked about the authors choice of the word dimensions as much as I am? I can't read past it. Wouldn't "factors" be a better fit?

They are dimensions but only two of them are independent: time and volume or frequency and volume. You can't arbitrarily set the three together.

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

#56

Post by ricree »

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).

Many modern hearing aids already have ways to do what he's looking for.

Bluetooth receivers for television or phones, for example. In other cases, I've seen lapel microphones meant to be worn by the person speaking.

If analog wants to build their own for the sake of the experience, or for cost, then I'm certainly not going to discourage them. But if all they want is the solution to that particular problem, it already exists and is being sold.

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

#57

Post by bigiain »

Stratoscope wrote: post #23
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…

You're not being pedantic at all. It's a fairly egregious error for an article about hearing . It would be like an article about a camera talking about its fast f/1.4 shutter speed.

Curiously, that sort of language is used by camera people. Aperture and shutter speed are not the same thing, but they are inextricably linked to each other (in a way that dynamic range (in the amplitude sense) and frequency response/range are not nearly so linked). In a "camera article", the phrase " ... its fast f/1.4 shutter speed." would probably be in the context of saying something about one or more of the sensor's size, sensitivity, or noise-floor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lens_speed

"Lens speed refers to the maximum aperture diameter, or minimum f-number, of a photographic lens. A lens with a larger maximum aperture (that is, a smaller minimum f-number) is called a "fast lens" because it delivers more light intensity (illuminance) to the focal plane, achieving the same exposure with a faster shutter speed."

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

#58

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#59

Post by HCIdivision17 »

carlob wrote: post #52

I once went to a 3h long blackboard talk given by James Hudspeth [1] on the physics of hearing. It was one of the most fascinating things I've ever heard: it turns out that not only the cochlea performs a Fourier transform of the sounds we're hearing, but it can also selectively amplify some frequencies, by vibrating the very same hair that detect the sounds. Sometimes the mechanism that amplifies some sounds goes wr…

I have always wondered if that high pitched sound was real! No one else heard it, and it makes so little sense I always figured it was my hearing.

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

#60

Post by ramLlama »

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…

A bigger issue with separating the microphone and amplifier is cosmetic: hearing aids sadly have a stigma attached to them and people are more likely to wear them if they are invisible. There is a reason why hearing aids are produced in hair colors.

Also, I found that the best way to get rid of feedback was to get an ear mold rather than using an "open-fit" mold. This is a clear separation between the speaker and the microphone and pretty much solves the problem in my experience.

EDIT: I noticed late that you addressed the cosmetic issue in your post. I don't see the elderly changing but our generation just might.

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