tony sayer wrote:

In a hospital hearing test It might come as a surprise for some to
find that they can be 30 odd dB or more even, down from 400 Hz to
around 8 kHz and then might worry about their amp being within a .1
of a dB from DC to Daylight;!...

You convey the quite popular misunderstanding that hearing threshold is an
expression of frequency response, it is not at all like that. The sense of
hearing is auto-aligning itself to the properties of the transducer - the
ear - as long as the sound in a critical band is above the threshold and has
zero detection if a sound is below. A simple concept, except that the bands
are bandpassfilters with a fairly low Q. That has the consequence that
signal in a nearby band weighs in and helps tip the scale of detectability,
something that explains that people with quite large threshold shifts may
have completely valid impressions of the treble on a recording or at a live
concert.

The auto-aligment feature is what makes it possible to "listen through" the
frequency response variations of loudspeakers and rooms as long as a
suitable "listen in" period is available. What is more important than mere
frequency response is the amount of information, there is no information
loss per se in a frequency response variation, but there is certainly a
grave information loss in case of severe resonances or rattle and buzz,
something that also the can be caused by mechanical malfunction in the
middle ear.

Kind regards

Peter Larsen

Jules Richardson wrote:

Interesting! That claimed my hearing was within normal range, which
anyone who knows me well would tell you is ******** ;-)

"Normal range" == normal for a city dweller of your age who has worked as a
blacksmith, it is an insurers defintion. Normal would imply that you had
less than 20 dB threshold shift from 20 Hz to quite possibly 32 kHz. This
based on some wording in some newspaper article about the results of
audiology on jungle tribes in Africa that I recall reading 30+ years ago.
"Normal range" just means that you don't have a valid insurance claim.

There is no good reason I am aware of - but I am unskilled - to assume that
age related hearing loss is anything but simple noise damage.

Jules

Kind regards

Peter Larsen

"Huge" wrote in message
...
On 2010-08-05, Peter Larsen wrote:

There is no good reason I am aware of - but I am unskilled - to assume
that
age related hearing loss is anything but simple noise damage.

There's a perfectly good reason. Why does your hair go grey, your skin
lose
its elasticity and your eyesight lose accommodation? Why shouldn't
cochlear hair cells suffer age related degeneration also?

I'm sure age is a factor but I do worry that we live in a world where our
ears may be exposed to noises of considerably greater intensity than they
evolved to cope with.

Tim

On 05/08/2010 in message Tim
Downie wrote:

I'm sure age is a factor but I do worry that we live in a world where our
ears may be exposed to noises of considerably greater intensity than they
evolved to cope with.

If Mother Nature had foreseen the Spice Girls we'd have been fitted with
built in ear plugs :-)

--
Jeff Gaines Dorset UK
Indecision is the key to flexibility

On 06/08/2010 08:24, Huge wrote:
On 2010-08-05, Tim wrote:

wrote in message
...
On 2010-08-05, Peter wrote:

There is no good reason I am aware of - but I am unskilled - to assume
that
age related hearing loss is anything but simple noise damage.

There's a perfectly good reason. Why does your hair go grey, your skin
lose
its elasticity and your eyesight lose accommodation? Why shouldn't
cochlear hair cells suffer age related degeneration also?

I'm sure age is a factor but I do worry that we live in a world where our
ears may be exposed to noises of considerably greater intensity than they
evolved to cope with.

Turn your iPod down.

There's a whole generation of deaf people coming ...

Rock concerts and bikes ruined the hearing of my generation.
I thought Apple mp3 players in Europe had a lower output to protect
young ears. I'm sure they are quieter than Motorhead was.

--
Eiron.

In article ,
"Tim Downie" writes:

"Huge" wrote in message
...
On 2010-08-05, Peter Larsen wrote:

There is no good reason I am aware of - but I am unskilled - to assume
that
age related hearing loss is anything but simple noise damage.

There's a perfectly good reason. Why does your hair go grey, your skin
lose
its elasticity and your eyesight lose accommodation? Why shouldn't
cochlear hair cells suffer age related degeneration also?

I'm sure age is a factor but I do worry that we live in a world where our
ears may be exposed to noises of considerably greater intensity than they
evolved to cope with.

Like the rest of your body, they're evolved to work well for about
35 years.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

On Thu, 5 Aug 2010 22:27:09 +0100, "Tim Downie" wrote:

I'm sure age is a factor but I do worry that we live in a world where our
ears may be exposed to noises of considerably greater intensity than they
evolved to cope with.

Maybe Van Gogh had it right....

-Mikkel

Eiron wrote:

There's a whole generation of deaf people coming ...

Rock concerts and bikes ruined the hearing of my generation.

Motorised bikes?

-Mikkel, The Ace Of Spades

Huge wrote:

I regard changing newsreaders (and text editors) with the same joy as
abdominal surgery.

Abdominal surgery may be nessecary to increase your life quality.

-Mikkel

On Thu, 05 Aug 2010 17:10:32 +0000, Huge wrote:
Here as a tinyurl if it's useful to anyone:

Nope.

...

It isn't looking for something on my (Linux) box, is it?

Shouldn't be, other than possibly the usual suspects (Flash etc.). I ran
it under Linux (FF 3.5) with no problems.

cheers

Jules