hearing stuff

[Diane Hofstetter]

>hearing stuff
>Leslie Bartlett l-bartlett at sbcglobal.net 

>I just got my butt kicked really hard today.... Actually my audiologist
>allowed me to mess things up and  let me find out on my own. 

Les, I'm sorry to hear that, sound is so important to you!

This is why I try to go to conventions and chapter meetings--to warn people to take it easy on their ears.  But our culture is not geared to that.  My mentor had two 20-somethings in his office last week--a man and wife who own a company that sells IPOD accessories.  My mentor found that they both have hearing loss and said over and over to me; "They're only in their 20's!"

> Talking to
>Danny Moore, who's mostly doing sound systems, I downloaded a little spectum
>analyzer and saw all this stuff that real people can hear, 

You gave yourself a hearing test with the EarQ software and hardware I have when you were 55.  There are 10 male piano technicians who tested their hearing when they were 55 with that set-up.  Of the other 9, 3 had better hearing than yours, three had essentially the same hearing and three had worse hearing.  That means that 7 out of the 10 55-year-old male piano technicians who tested their hearing with my equipment had a high frequency hearing loss significant to impact their tuning.  They are all real people, in fact, since I know many of them, I'd say they are great people!


>so I went to
>suggesting  radical changes be made to my hearing aids.  She was as
>accomodating  as she could be, but now I am plagued with feedback in every
>program.  We'll get that fixed in a couple weeks, and in the meantime I can
>control the volume.   But the grating truth I learned today after being told
>several times that once something's gone it is GONE. No amount of technology
>will bring it back.  


Actually, modern digital hearing aids, while not miracles, do help.  They can be set to compress sounds where you still have hair cells  into your hearing range, so that soft sounds can be made louder while loud sounds are not amplified beyond your tolerance levels.  The old linear hearing aids could only add the same amount of decibels to every frequency, regardless of your hearing. 

It's true that if you have cochlear dead zones (areas where there are no sensing cells at all), hearing aids cannot help.  When all of a person's inner and outer haircells are totally gone, there are cochlear implants which have only been around about 20 years.  They restore hearing, but it is not the hearing that we are accustomed to, because they do not have as many  electrodes as we have haircells.



>So all the discussion about soft and hard blows is moot when one has killed
>off the hairs in the cochlea.  

Not exactly, as long as you have some hearing, which you certainly do, there is more to lose.  The rare individual is not susceptible to noise induced hearing loss.  Since you already have more loss than you'd like, it is even more necessary for you to protect what you have left, since you are susceptible.


>Each time one does "damage", something is
>lost which will never be recovered in its original state no matter what
>technology makes available.  Often the damge is done, even decades can pass
>before it actually shows up, but it will.  It's a sad lesson I learned today
>as my audiologist tried once again to explain, and finally let me boost
>things to where I figured I'd get some of this high stuff back. IT IS JUST
>GONE! DEAD.  It will never be back. 

> I wear hearing protection for
>everything I do above the level of the choir I direct.

GOOD!


> So for those with
>genetic disposition to hearing loss, and others who are disposed by age or
>medical factors, beware....   When it's gone, it's gone.  I wasn't finally
>hit with that until my programs had done more compensating than they should,
>and still NOTHING of the frequencies above 5,000 were accessible- learned
>while tuning a Hamburg with 20cents variation for a concert tomorrow night.

>This may have been said numerous times before, but I didn't get it.

You gave yourself that hearing test on the EarQ about 7 years ago, when you were 55.  Most of the other 10 55-year old piano technicians gave themselves the test since then.  Some are only 56 now, or 57.  I hope they hear you.

>Today,
>sadly, I got it in the most kind and brutal  realization- experience, the
>best teacher.  .  (Oh, by the way, the spectrum analyzer, about 20 bucks, is
>cool.)
>les bartlett


Diane Hofstetter