<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=us-ascii"> <META NAME="Generator" CONTENT="MS Exchange Server version 6.5.7036.0"> <TITLE>hearing stuff</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY>  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.  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, 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.  For instance if I've lost 70% of my hearing at 5,000 cycles, the best hearing aids can do is work with the 30% that's left, and hope to goodness they don't overpower that, thus further damaging things.  So  if the threshold of "painful hearing"  is 100%, and I hear zero until the sound is amplified to 70%   I have only that 30% span to go from zero to 100%, as the "painful hearing" threshold for me is the same as for normally hearing. Pain is pain, and once you get there, it hurts.  It is NOT like you add technology and things get fixed at all. There is no fixing what is totally broken.  If an 8 cylinder car is running only on two, now matter what you try to do to beef it up, it will never be an 8 again unless it can run on 8 cylinders. And hearing which is lost can NEVER be restored, only "aided" some.     So if you put a turbo on the 2 cylinders, it'll help a bit, but it will never again run like an 8.  This is not a fun thing to realize..  So, though I've done some pretty high level tuning, I am having to adapt to what is a real handicap, and it won't get better. I'll never hear the 2nd partial of C8- never, even though my hearing aids go to 9500 hz.  That part of my hearing mechanism is just flat gone and it will never be back. So all the discussion about soft and hard blows is moot when one has killed off the hairs in the cochlea.  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. 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. 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 </BODY> </HTML>