Hacker News Reader

Comment by h2odragon | Hacker News Reader

> a matter of taste

Taste, yes; and individual circumstances. My hearing is so good it might count as a disability, but I know where I have peaks and valleys in my sensitivity and a good EQ can help with the spikes taken by tinnitus ringing from youthful big boom car stereo work and explosives.

I checked their suggestions for my headphones against my EQ profile and theirs is pretty good. I like more lowfreq and much less high freq than the "flat" they're correcting for.

They're offering a great resource for skipping the "what does this set of cans sound like" stage. I probably spent 60hr or more dialing these in when i got them.

View on HN

How can you find out where the peaks and valleys in your hearing are? I've wanted to get basically an EQ curve for my own ear hearing issues if possible as I'm sure I have some minor hearing loss, but wasn't sure how to do that. Any tips?

listen to a frequency generator while twiddling its dial. I dunno what would be the easiest tool to do that with right now, i'd start in audacity or some "audio programming toolkit".

Yes, I know enough to know I can sweep a sine wave, but I also know enough to know it’s more complicated than that. There are various curves that affect the perception of sound volume at different frequencies, like the response of the headphones, the varying response curve of frequency perception at different volumes, the inherent differing volume response curve in your brain/ears that is the basis for stuff like LUFS. I was wondering if there is a correct way to do this that corrects for all these different effects, or something professional you can do or pay for to get this measured correctly.

AFAIK "professional/medical" tests like 8 bands and may have put a decibel meter to their equipment this month. or not.

some professional audio engineers have some special recordings they listen to on everything and use a faith based or at least difficult to quantify internal process to come up with the "right" sound. I'm more in that end of the spectrum.

Ah okay, I'm surprised there isn't something more precise and scientific out there. Interesting to know that the theoretical gold standard I would really want might not even exist.

Edit: I stand corrected, as the poster below mention (I can't reply), I'd want an audiogram from a professional. Thanks!

You want an Audiogram from a professional. There are definitely medical facilities that can do this to a sufficient degree of accuracy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audiogram

You can go to an audiologist that can produce this for you, if it's worth it to you

https://sourceforge.net/projects/peace-equalizer-apo-extensi... has a feature to set the eq based on your ability to hear certain frequencies

In which sense is your hearing 'so good it might count as a disability'?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperacusis

I don't hear "notes" and "chords", I hear frequencies. My range (at near 50) still goes up to where i can hear the bats talking. In a room with people, i cannot not hear their pulse, breathing, and other biological proceedings...

> i cannot not hear their pulse, breathing, and other biological proceedings

Oh WOW, that is ...... wild and interesting

I had it as a kid, went away in my teen years and now I only have tinnitus. For me it was only on certain frequencies that were boosted and they are near the principal harmonic of my always-there ringing tinnitus or in the frequency of another noise I sometimes hear that's more like a pure sinewave.

As far as I know it's more of a brain thing and not like a super-ear thing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com