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The future of my hearing

One day I know my hearing will not be as keen as it is now. I'm not forecasting a huge hearing loss but I realize highs and lows may not be as dynamic and intelligibility may be an issue. The sad fact is I, and all of you, will have some hearing loss. I wonder if my hearing change will affect my equipment likes or my love of certain types of music. For those of you who experienced a hearing change, how has a hearing change affected your listening pleasure? How did you have to compensate for hearing changes? Also, if your listening pleasure diminished did you change your system? Sorry if this topic seems negative but it is, with a few exceptions, reality for all of us if we live past our late 60's. I want to know what others have experienced.
rayd
magfan
1,583 posts
 
When I was a kid, and I mean pre-teen, I could occasionally hear the ultra sonic alarm in some stores. This huge ringing that I could comb-filter away sometimes by turning my head. This tells me hi-freqency / short wavelength.
By the time I was 20, I couldn't hear 'em to save my life.
I guess things haven't gotten any better.
Maybe, I'll take out one of those frequency stepped test discs and see where the upper limit is today. But do I want to know?
Ag insider logo xs@2x
dbphd
1,628 posts
 
I haven't stayed current with hearing loss literature for decades, but the contention when i was studying auditory processing was that, absent noise-induced hearing loss, hearing loss with age is not expected. The evidence for this expectation was adduced from measurements among populations relatively free of noise exposure. Unfortunately, most of us are exposed to sufficient levels of noise to induce some hearing loss. The classic case is a notch around 4 kHz. Firearms are a major culprit.

db
waryn
20 posts
 
Ferenc Fricsay was one of the finest conductors of the 20th century. He would have been much more famous if he had not not died at the early age of 48. His hearing spectrum was extremely limited and uneven.

Up to a certain, regular point of hear loss, your brain will compensate automatically. It's only if you become severely deaf in such a way that you cannot cope with everyday life, that problems will occur.

About 2 to 4 of every 1,000 people in the United States are "functionally deaf," though more than half became deaf relatively late in life; fewer than 1 out of every 1,000 people in the United States became deaf before 18 years of age. (source)
electroid
283 posts
 
Ele -make sure he keeps the volume as low as possible. Cans can really accelerate his loss if misused.

ET
electroid
283 posts
 
Dbphd

Actually the notch is usually between 2.7-3K which is the resonant frequency of the outer ear/canal combination. When testing anyone who had a lot of noise exposure (often military) they had that notch as the low point of their response graph. At 4/6 and 8K the response was anywhere from 10-40db better.

ET
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