Hard of hearing & Sennheiser HD600 woes

[Redeamon]

I was born hard of hearing and I love music. My family has a musical background, so naturally I do too. I can sense tonal differences between notes and harmony but require the sound to be driven somewhat high. I would say that I have an ear for music.

Recently I purchased the HD600's after hearing rave reviews on many audiophile forums. I decided it was time to change over from my DCM Timewindows to headphones as I now live in an apartment.

I want to experience sound the way normal hearing people do - so I have a few questions.

1) Is there a way to equalize the sound professionally to my loss of hearing? I've heard conflicting reports as one person says it's possible and the other says it's impossible due to dynamic range.

2) Since I'm hard of hearing and need the volume to be naturally turned up to hear the full spectrum am I further damaging my hearing? I know intuition says yes but intuition isn’t always correct.

3) I listen to most of my music from FLAC's on my computer. I use the digital out from my soundcard to my Onkyo TX-SR600 receiver and then from the phone out to my headphones. I'm aware of the cheap circuits in receivers to drive the headphone jack. Is it necessary to purchase a headphone amp for the HD600 and if I did, would I notice an improvement over the receiver with my hearing situation?

I'm about 25% below normal in the midrange, 30% below normal in the high range and 15% below normal in the low range. These figures are from my audiogram with a bunch of eye guess work. Audiograms don’t seem very accurate to me.

Thanks for the help.
Red

 

[jaxvon]

I was born hard of hearing and I love music. My family has a musical background, so naturally I do too. I can sense tonal differences between notes and harmony but require the sound to be driven somewhat high. I would say that I have an ear for music.

Recently I purchased the HD600's after hearing rave reviews on many audiophile forums. I decided it was time to change over from my DCM Timewindows to headphones as I now live in an apartment.

I want to experience sound the way normal hearing people do - so I have a few questions.

1) Is there a way to equalize the sound professionally to my loss of hearing? I've heard conflicting reports as one person says it's possible and the other says it's impossible due to dynamic range.

2) Since I'm hard of hearing and need the volume to be naturally turned up to hear the full spectrum am I further damaging my hearing? I know intuition says yes but intuition isn’t always correct.

3) I listen to most of my music from FLAC's on my computer. I use the digital out from my soundcard to my Onkyo TX-SR600 receiver and then from the phone out to my headphones. I'm aware of the cheap circuits in receivers to drive the headphone jack. Is it necessary to purchase a headphone amp for the HD600 and if I did, would I notice an improvement over the receiver with my hearing situation?

I'm about 25% below normal in the midrange, 30% below normal in the high range and 15% below normal in the low range. These figures are from my audiogram with a bunch of eye guess work. Audiograms don’t seem very accurate to me.

Thanks for the help.
Red

While I can't answer on the subject of ear health, I can tell you that what you want to do is quite possible. The best option for equalization would be to get as much data as you can from your audiogram, then use the data to create a convolution file. Then use this with Foobar2000 as your media player, and BINGO, you've got a perfectly corrected response.

 

[Ampdog]

Redeamon,

I have been involved in research on hearing and audiometers, but I am not a doctor. I would guess that a solution for you is totally possible. You may not even require digital equalisation, as your profile appears to be within the capability of normal analogue filters. But to be on the safe side and get the correct information, a visit to an audiologist will be a good idea (hope it is not too expensive!), especially regarding possible future damage. As my knowledge goes audiograms are usually quite accurate. Whether or not you would need an extra amplifier, others may advise here; I am not familiar with your present equipment. An outboard headphone amplifier especially with filter will likely improve matters for you.

Are you an electronics DIYer? In which case you could make such an amplifier + filter yourself - I shudder at the rediculous prices I see charged for headphone amplifiers.

Regards.
____________________________________________________________
If you wish you could mail me directly, giving your audiogram figures. Perhaps I could say more from that.

 

[pbarach1]

1) Is there a way to equalize the sound professionally to my loss of hearing? I've heard conflicting reports as one person says it's possible and the other says it's impossible due to dynamic range.

Some have suggested that you use the results of an audiogram to get equalization done. One problem is that audiograms typically go from 125 or 250 Hz up to 8000 Hz, since they are primarily done to assess the audibility of speech. Each point on the graph is a full octave. Although the points are connected on the audiogram, the hearing test doesn't actually measure all of the points between the octave, and there is no information about your hearing abilities at the in-between frequencies.

Thus, the audiogram doesn't give you enough information to do a really thorough job of compensating with an equalizer to get music reproduction with a flat frequency response. Not enough measurement points, not enough frequency range. However, I did use the results of my audiogram to input some manual settings into my Denon 3805's built-in EQ so that speech on TV shows is much clearer. But I don't use the settings for music.

 

[Bassman2]

Pete Townsend has said that his hearing loss isn't so much from the WHO gigs he played, which were the loudest in the business, but was caused by the cans in the studio. I would be extremely careful if I were you. I have some hearing loss too and even though I listened to lots of live rock music and played in a band, most was caused by headphones I used for just a couple of years.

 

[mtrycrafts]

How bad is your hearing, any idea?

Some interesting inputs, especially about an audiogram's limited frequency test. It would be kind of pointless to boos only those frequencies and you would miss all the ones in-between, perhaps.

 

[Nick250]

Beringer makes a number of headphone amps to consider and not as expensive as one might think.

Nick

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/navigation/behringer-headphone-amps?N=100001+304640+201184&page=1