PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Hearing Aids and Music

Here's a bit of advice on your output EQ for your DAW at least.

1. Get your audiologist to give you a copy of your audiogram. The audiogram represents your HL, Hearing Level, as compared to 'normal' hearing.

2. The curves or the table of values, will look something like this:
http://hearingaidinsider.com/articles/understanding-hearing-test-results-audiogram

The values are the amount of 'loss' compared to someone with more normal hearing.

3. You can use a graphic EQ to give you up to 24 dB of adjustability, so that what you are hearing on the output of the EQ so that the result is more 'normal' as it would be heard by your ears with their hearing loss, you do this by basically flipping the audiogram upside-down, for the EQ settings.

Does this make sense?

Let's say your right and left ears have similar HL values, so I'll go through the EQ setting for just one ear.

Let's say the HL values are as follows in this little table, where we have Frequency in Hz, and HL in dB, and then I also will post the delta from that band to the HL where the least amount of loss is evident.

125 / 10 / 0
250 / 10 / 0
500 / 20 / 10
1000 / 25 / 15
2000 / 25 / 15
3150 / 35 / 25
4000 / 45 / 35
6300 / 35 / 25
8000 / 25 / 15

There is a total span of loss from 10 dB at the lower frequencies, to a max of 45 dB at 4000 Hz. A 35 dB difference from the lowest amount of loss to the highest.

This is a typical shape of an audiogram for a person that has suffered noise induced hearing loss, with the '4k Notch'.

If you want to listen to music where the output frequency response will sound more 'normal' to you, what you want to do is apply an EQ which negates that loss shape as much as possible. In other words, the EQ 'boost' that you want to employ, is the right column of numbers

With most graphic EQs, you have a +/- 12 dB range for each band. To negate this loss shape for this generic example, I would use two graphic EQ's in series.

The first EQ I would set the sliders to be at the following values:

100-315 Hz, set to -12 (yes, minus - this will become clear in a moment hopefully)
500 Hz, set to -2
1000 Hz, set to +3
2000 Hz, set to +3
3150 Hz, set to +12
4000 Hz, set to +12
6300 Hz, set to + 12
8000 Hz, set to + 3

And all the intermediate frequencies not listed, I would set so that they are a smooth transition between those bands you have already set.

In series, put another graphic EQ plugin in place.

On this one, set it flat except for

4000 Hz, set to +10

If you look at the delta of the settings I suggested, you will see that if you sum the deltas from the two EQs for each frequency, they will be close to the overall HL deltas. Case and point, look at 4000 Hz, there is a difference of 35 dB between the HL at the lowest frequencies of 10 and 45 dB at 4000 Hz. The EQ settings that I have suggested will allow 34 dB (roughly, there is the matter of the bandwidth of each of the EQ sliders) of gain of the 4000 Hz setting, compared to the settings of the lower frequencies. First EQ is a 24 dB difference, second EQ puts an additional 10 dB at 4000 Hz.

Most audiograms will not show frequencies higher than 8000 Hz. What you do there is up to you. I would suggest boosting the same amount as at 8 kHz total to start with, then add/subtract from there.

If your headphones or speakers can handle it, you should notice high-frequency clarity that perhaps has been missing in your music enjoyment.

If you have different losses left to right ear, try to employ this process independently per ear.

This is not a substitute for hearing aids. Hearing aids are optimized for speech intelligibility for the most part, even those with 'music' programs - the speaker in the hearing aid is still optimized for speech; very low and very high frequency capability are limited.

This is a solution for listening to music with enjoyment (WIHTOUT HEARING AIDS). I have 're-EQd' music for people with known hearing losses in this way and in one case, the gentleman told me that when he first heard a balanced amount of music left to right ear, with the mid and high frequency clarity, he was brought to tears.

It is also recommended for headphone listening, where you have more direct control of music going to each ear. Finally, I would suggest that high-quality isolating headphones (I can tell you where to get some!) will also improve this capability.

Do not do this and use hearing aids if you have them. If the delta of loss is greater than the example, you might need to figure out how to stack 3 EQs in a chain and what the overall settings should be for each band for each EQ.

The cool thing about plugins is that you should be able to do this in your DAW. If you use BlueCat's frequency analyzer http://www.bluecataudio.com/Products/Product_FreqAnalyst/ , you can overlay a frequency analysis plugin on the input to the EQ chain with one on the output of the chain, and see if you are in fact introducing the upside down audiogram to the final music. Depending on the Q values of the EQ, you may need to adjust sliders accordingly if too much boost is being applied.