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Experimenting on My Hearing Loss

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Re: Experimenting on My Hearing Loss

#61

Post by antman »

Seanambers wrote: post #60

I must say - After having Lasik done to my eyes and then not beeing happy with the results. I am quite amazed that there is so little real research going on with regards to senses everyone needs to function in society. Hearing, seeing, feeling. I saw a documentary about the boston bombers, and a lot of the survivors lost their legs or had their legs maimed. One of the survivors had a leg that was basically an attempt…

In what way were you unhappy with Lasik? Was it a matter of ecpectations or do you consider the end result could be better?

Re: Experimenting on My Hearing Loss

#62

Post by torben-friis »

Seanambers wrote: post #60

I must say - After having Lasik done to my eyes and then not beeing happy with the results. I am quite amazed that there is so little real research going on with regards to senses everyone needs to function in society. Hearing, seeing, feeling. I saw a documentary about the boston bombers, and a lot of the survivors lost their legs or had their legs maimed. One of the survivors had a leg that was basically an attempt…

> There's so much pain in the world, and it seems like the people most competent with the issues, are more occupied by nonsense. In almost all other professional trades, people willingly give their time and energy to solve problems. But when it comes to the most important machine as in - ourselves it's all for the money.

How many engineers work in, say, making education available for the poor vs "improving engagement" (generating addiction) for ad-based entertainment businesses?

Resources aren't usually allocated the way one would suppose is the best for society as a whole; but I don't see how that's in any way exclusive to medicine.

Re: Experimenting on My Hearing Loss

#63

Post by pdfernhout »

CurtHagenlocher wrote: post #56

It's awesome how easy this kind of experimentation is today. Thirty years ago, I worked with a mathematician at JPL who used fairly specialized equipment to find a frequency notch where he had lost his hearing -- at roughly 8k, IIRC, in addition to his total inability to hear anything over ~12k. (The latter was probably just normal age-related high-frequency hearing loss). In those days, an accurate signal generator…

Indeed! And here is even a website which uses pre-made tones and generates a personal audiogram with a bookmarkable link: https://hearingtest.online/

Re: Experimenting on My Hearing Loss

#64

Post by nitrogen »

I found it very interesting that (unless I misread) you are applying a time-varying gain to the whole spectrum rather than using a simple filter or EQ. Have you experimented with setting a 31-band graphic EQ to the inverse of your audiogram, or multiplying the FFT bands by a frequency-dependent gain and using IFFT? If so, does the time-windowing approach work better?

Re: Experimenting on My Hearing Loss

#65

Post by vpretzel »

phaedrus wrote: post #15
caeril wrote: post #9

Objectively, my hearing is just fine. I can hear frequency sweeps and tones perfectly well, but all my life I've been unable to pick out words in conversation if there's even moderate background noise. "What?" is likely my most commonly uttered phrase. This leads to people constantly telling me to get my "hearing checked", when it's not the ability to hear tones that's the problem. Rather irritating explaining this t…

I have the same issue. Worse, when I did get my hearing checked, the supposed test for difficulty picking up speech against background noise was terribly and obviously flawed. They used a very short (few seconds) clip that looped. My brain quickly learned the loop and subtracted it. What I can't do is filter out unpredictable background noise. Plus the lab is an idealized environment without distractions. Want to acc…

As someone who has been profoundly Deaf since infancy, i found your description of auditory testing to be spot on.

I am not an expert by experience but what you have described sounds like a possible Auditory Processing Disorder (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder). Experts in this disorder are very limited but there are strategies available for managing APD. However there is rarely a silver bullet for hearing disorders.

Re: Experimenting on My Hearing Loss

#66

Post by warent »

caeril wrote: post #9

Objectively, my hearing is just fine. I can hear frequency sweeps and tones perfectly well, but all my life I've been unable to pick out words in conversation if there's even moderate background noise. "What?" is likely my most commonly uttered phrase. This leads to people constantly telling me to get my "hearing checked", when it's not the ability to hear tones that's the problem. Rather irritating explaining this t…

It sounds like it could be an attention issue. Have you been evaluated for ADHD?

Re: Experimenting on My Hearing Loss

#67

Post by DoreenMichele »

caeril wrote: post #9

Objectively, my hearing is just fine. I can hear frequency sweeps and tones perfectly well, but all my life I've been unable to pick out words in conversation if there's even moderate background noise. "What?" is likely my most commonly uttered phrase. This leads to people constantly telling me to get my "hearing checked", when it's not the ability to hear tones that's the problem. Rather irritating explaining this t…

This sounds like an auditory processing disorder. I have delayed understanding of words when I'm really exhausted, wrung out or sick. It's not a hearing issue. It's a brain issue, basically.

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

Re: Experimenting on My Hearing Loss

#68

Post by sensitive-ears »

Anyone got any good ideas for the reverse problem? I can still hear 20khz at 30 years old, which is the standard switching frequency for most power supplies. Induction cooktops drive me up the wall, I can't stand to be close to one when its on. (And yes, I've recorded the sound, run it through a fft, removed the lower frequencies and it still annoys me)

Re: Experimenting on My Hearing Loss

#69

Post by TeMPOraL »

randomdata wrote: post #58
TeMPOraL wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you'll get your diagnosis eventually. > It also makes relationships difficult; I've been married four years and my wife is only now starting to actually understand and believe me when I say I didn't hear what she said (vs just not caring / not listening). I feel for you. This reminded me of my recent discovery. You've probably seen this[0] image test circulating on social media the other day. Few days ago, whe…

> As it turns out, she truly can visualize everything in her head. Here I would have told you that I can visualize everything in my head... until I took the test – definite 1. I can visualize everything in some loose sense, but it is encoded differently. Like, to use a poor analogy, a computer can represent an image as binary digits. I can understand 6 in my mind. Perhaps I took the test too literally?

Nah, you have to take it literally. You score 6 if you can - while awake - conjure clear, colorful images in your head on demand, that you can manipulate. Based on my reading on the topic and talking with my wife, it's very close to arbitrary rendering in your field of vision.

With my score of 2, I also "encode differently". I can sort-of work with imaginary visual data in my head, but it feels like - excuse the bad analogy - like looking into a debugger hooked up to a program that tries to render something. I am aware of an imaginary object, I can manipulate it symbolically. I can stack transformations in my head, like "it's rotated horizontally", "and also on the other axis", and "it's red", but most of my manipulations happen at this symbolic layer. The rendering pipeline goes nowhere; if I focus, I can sometimes force an unclear image to appear briefly.

Re: Experimenting on My Hearing Loss

#70

Post by randomdata »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #69
randomdata wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As it turns out, she truly can visualize everything in her head. Here I would have told you that I can visualize everything in my head... until I took the test – definite 1. I can visualize everything in some loose sense, but it is encoded differently. Like, to use a poor analogy, a computer can represent an image as binary digits. I can understand 6 in my mind. Perhaps I took the test too literally?

Nah, you have to take it literally. You score 6 if you can - while awake - conjure clear, colorful images in your head on demand, that you can manipulate. Based on my reading on the topic and talking with my wife, it's very close to arbitrary rendering in your field of vision. With my score of 2, I also "encode differently". I can sort-of work with imaginary visual data in my head, but it feels like - excuse the bad…

Fascinating. In an earlier life I worked as a graphic designer and always felt I had a keen ability to accurately visualize the art in my head before putting pen to paper, so to speak. But never like having a canvas in front of me, definitely more symbolic like you describe.

I'm not sure I can completely relate to your experience with needing CAD, other than I've noticed that sometimes the real world is flipped to my mental model, which can lead to funny results when my actions are backwards. I can usually 'visualize' things like that, at least in some abstract sense.

Well, that is, except specifically when it comes to my bother and father. They can somehow explain things to each other and know exactly what they are talking about with ease, as if they have some kind of telepathic link. They can say the exact same thing to me and I'll have absolutely no clue as to what they are talking about until they draw a picture. Now you have me curious to know if they are able to score 6.

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