Hearing test
One of the advantages of having a son with a hearing impairment is wrangling free hearing tests for yourself.I noticed that I was tending to listen to the t.v. at loud volumes -- and watch DVDs with the subtitles turned on -- so I wondered if I was experiencing some middle-aged hearing loss. So, the next time we were in for B1's routine hearing appointment, I asked for a hearing test.
The results are pretty average for my age: all within "normal", but with the beginnings of some upper-range rolloff.
According to this, most clarity in speech comes from sounds above 1kHz (i.e. 1,000 Hz and above).
I thumbed through two of my ''home recording'' books, to see if I could find which frequency bands are most responsible for ''clarity'' or ''definition'' in speech. I didn't find a specific frequency band -- although ''s'' is around 5kHz-8kHz.
So, it's possible that some minor hearing loss has led me to jack up the volume. More likely is that the kids are noisy, and that the t.v. in a highly reverberant room (no rugs near the t.v.; lots of flat, acoustically reflective surfaces).
--GG
posted by Gye Greene @ 10:23 PM
1 Comments:
Or maybe you have some high-frequency hearing loss. I seem to have some too. I'm not sure if it's because I work with 3rd graders all day, or if it's because of my own two kids, but I, too, have noticed using the subtitle function more often when watching DVDs. (Also, sometimes it's hard to understand my students.)
Know of anyone else we're related to who seems to have difficulty hearing?
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