The future of my hearing

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.

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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)

Ele -make sure he keeps the volume as low as possible. Cans can really accelerate his loss if misused.

ET

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

Buconero117

You make some good points but hearing loss does take away to varying degrees. I have a very close friend I fitted. He was on NPR for 35 years and has written liner notes on hundreds of classical albums. Music is his life. While I did a better job than the two or three audiologists he tried he still has good and bad days. Some days a violin E string just doesn't sound good. Many hearing impaired say this same thing.

Directional mics only improve speech in noisy places. They make music worse. They are two out of phase mics. The best way to listen to music w/aids is to use one omni mic per side and turn off all the compression etc. needed to "manage" speech. Also the new aids that have the receiver (thats what they call the speaker in hearing aid industry)in the ear canal right next to the ear drum have the best and most realistic sound and HF. HF is the hardest to reproduce and is usually where people lose the most of their hearing. Usually a hearing aid has the "receiver" send its sound through a small 1/16th of an inch in diameter tube that is anywhere from a half inch to two inches long depending on the hearing aid type.