How can you trust your ears?

Overdose

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Feb 8, 2008
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How many people have had a hearing test recently? In the last year? Last 2, 3 or 4 years?

For those in the Hi-Fi industry, I would consider it a pre-requisite.

I don't work in the industry however, but I do have regular comprehensive hearing tests.
 
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Anonymous

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I can trust my ears because they are the only things have with which to hear!
I am curious as to why you have regular "comprehensive" hearing tests. Unless of course you work on a submarine manning the sonar...
 

Overdose

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Many industries that have noisy working environments have a duty of care to their employees, which includes ensuring that hearing is adequately protected. Many other industries have requirements for employees to have their hearing tested in certain frequency ranges to ensure that they are able to do their job effectively.

I would have thought that the Hi-Fi industry, which is inextricably linked to customers hearing, would have some means to ensure its employees were qualified to make any judgements on sound quality. How could a person make any truely objective statement about a product if they have defective hearing?

Also, why would anyone chase Hi-Fi nirvana if they've got 'cloth' ears? Seems a bit pointless to look for, say, better higher frequency definition, when hearing could be impaired at these frequencies.
 

idc

Well-known member
I did some tests via the internet, easy enough to find and my hearing is standard for my age.

How can you trust your ears, as in can you really hear a difference between cables or is it all in the mind, now that is the killer question.........

......run away.......
 

Overdose

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Now that was naughty...
emotion-1.gif
 
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Anonymous

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If you are buying for you, then that's all you've got.

For reviewers and creators of hifi you have a good point - they may be deaf after all these years listening at too high volume - and reading some reviews that kinda makes sense! A 60 year old will perceive a different sound to a 20 year old, but then again, half way between these extremes I can discern differences I could not hear when I was 20 - not because me ears are better - they can't be, but my brain is better trained to listen than it was then.

There is a lot of fact, fiction and downright BS spoken about music, all in good measures. Its a mine field that the magazines and industry don't want cleared, because it sells product. On top of that you have personal preference. And on top of that, your perceived personal preference and your actual preference. I have fallen down this one, asking for one thing and realising that perhaps I preferred something different in style to what I thought I did because there is no standard way to describe sound.

There is no absolute in music, so the ears play a much lesser part than at first you may think. Although if you have clinical hearing loss, you are clearly at a disadvantage and should not be designing hifi or writing professional reviews.

At fear of causing fury, I would suggest, by way of example, that LP's cannot give a more accurate rendition of sound compared to CD, simply because squishing a bit of hot plastic between some metal plates, and then playing the result by skitting a bit of crystal over the undulations created and pushing this tiny signal through an RIAA pre-amp cannot elicit a flat, accurate frequency response. Lab accurate no. Preferred by many, yes.
 

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