Wally, It sounds like you are doing good things for people's hearing--researching info for the church music director on hearing loss and sound systems. Many churches today are turning the levels up too high for safety. The audio engineer at Mount Hermon Christian Conference Center--where I tuned for 25 years--told me one time that many of the church groups brought their own equipment, thinking Mt.Hermon's was too underpowered. He said that at one recent concerrt the musicians brought an additional 6 amplifiers with them and cranked them all the way up. The sound level went off the top end of his soundlevel meter and he complained to them, the level was too high and dangerous. The musicians told him they liked it that way. In frustration, he turned toward the woman carrying an infant; "Don't you even care about your baby?" he asked. She answered that the baby was "used to it", she heard it in church every Sunday. Which means that her child will grow up deaf and having to attend special schools. About the hearing test at digital recordings. It is interesting and fun to do. Unfortunately, it is far from accurate in that they simply choose whatever level you select the second time as being the level of your hearing. Which means, that should you happen to think of something else exactly when the second stimulus is applied, you will get a worse reading. In addition, we all have different computers, different sound cards and speakers and there is no calibration of the signal. So, the results you get are potluck. The method that has been chosen as the most reliable is that the person taking the test must select the same level at least two out of three presentations at that level. Then the level is lowered 10dB for every correct answer, or raised 5 dB for every incorrect answer until two out of three are chosen.. And the audiometer is calibrated annually. That's good news about your hearing! Actually, minus 10dB is an improvement in hearing level over 0 dB. The hearing test is designed to be reported in how many dB of sound pressure level have to be given to you in order for you to hear the signal. Thus minus 10 dB means your hearing improved over the last nine years. in fact, minus 10 dB is the best hearing most audiometers are capable of measuring. I hope you had some success with the church music director. Diane Hofstetter [pianotech] Free online hearing testWally Scherer afinetune at yahoo.com Sun Apr 19 10:31:39 PDT 2009 Previous message: [pianotech] Project piano for you restorers out there ....... Next message: [pianotech] Project piano for you restorers out there ....... Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] At ages 52 and 61 I got my hearing tested. It had dropped from mostly 0 to -10 db in the nine year span. While doing some research recently about hearing loss and sound systems in preparation for a meeting with the church music director, I ran across the following link for checking your own hearing. It's a bit complicated and not compatible with my 7 year old computer running the Linspire operating system, but some of you may want to give it a try. http://www.digital-recordings.com/hearing-test/ht-products.html Please let the rest of us know how it works out. Wallace T. Scherer, piano technician, music educator P.O. Box 4121, Lantana, Florida, USA, 33465 Telephone: 561-432-4121 Web page: http://aftune.angelfire.com ------------------------------------------------ FREE TICKETS: http://aftune.angelfire.com/freetics.html Diane Hofstetter -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20090423/f2170adf/attachment-0001.html>
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