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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2012 11:47:26 GMT
I hope I'm not stating the obvious (again ) but is it not at least possible that people with a keen and long standing interest in making and listening to 'good' music have, without really being conscious of the fact, trained their hearing to be aware of facets within that music that the more 'normal' person (sorry Ian/Alex ) would be completely oblivious to? That might well explain why Alex clearly hears things that others say he should not be able to hear at his age (a few months older than me but I'm catching up fast ;D ). Surely it would be strange if this did not happen, given the brain's capacity for 'learning', particularly when something is repeated regularly. Sorry if I'm preaching to the converted .
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Post by JohnnyBlue on Sept 14, 2012 15:41:50 GMT
Sorry to go back a bit on this thread, but I'm curious (for the sake of my hearing!) about dB levels for music listening.
To satisfy my curiousity, last year I bought a cheap dB meter from Maplins, and I was re-assured to discover that when listening to my speaker system, I usually had it peaking at about 80-85dB. I'd read here and elsewhere that, although this is pretty loud, it's fairly typical for people with a decent hi-fi, and Ian has come up with a similar figure in this thread.
More recently, I've tried checking my headphone listening levels, but have discovered that it's much more difficult to get a meaningful figure: if I hold the meter in between the two earpieces, it'll be ridiculously low (60-65dB). However, if I shove the meter's mike right up against one or other earpiece (on my Senn HD600s, say), it'll give a figure peaking up to 85dB, sometimes more, but then I'm thinking I don't really have my ears up against the driver unit, although, on the other hand, it does get 'sealed' by the pads.
So what's this trick people are using, involving a CD or cardboard, or both?
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2012 18:10:01 GMT
John, I measured it with a db meter.
A while back, I just made holes in cars which i stuck material onto on one side. That's the side that faces the driver.
I just put the card up against an earpiece and poke the meter through until it's about where I think my ear is.
The material stops reflects because your ear is not like a piece of card (!). It's handy to give a rough idea.
Once you get up to 90db, it's surprising how much more power you need to keep going up actually.
Now, I recognise when it's just too loud much more readily without a meter.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2012 20:03:22 GMT
A while back, I just made holes in cars which i stuck material onto on one side. That's the side that faces the driver. Guess where my mind was when I first read the sentence above
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2012 20:33:02 GMT
OMG What a weird coincidence, It's supposed to say Card. ;D I don't half write some rubbish sometimes.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2012 21:23:54 GMT
A while back, I just made holes in cars which i stuck material onto on one side. That's the side that faces the driver. Guess where my mind was when I first read the sentence above Holes in my car I hear sound as a wall I can lock all my doors But you will still hear my bass in cars. Holes in my car FM too I receive I cannot hear you I am deafened day by day in cars....
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2012 21:43:19 GMT
Here's a strange thing...................well strange to me. I can be listening to speaker output at a little under the level which would irritate MGLW on the floor below.
She comes upstairs to retire pops her head around the door and diplomatically says good night.
I immediately turn down the volume in order that she is not disturbed, this is lower than I would really like but past experience and the late hour dictates the pecking order.
Quite quickly I'm reasonably happy with this reduced volume and enjoying my music. The strange part to me is that sometime later.......I've never timed it..........I think that the listening level has risen and I reduce the volume, this can take place several times during which my ears adjust to the lower levels. Perhaps my love of high volume levels is misguided.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2012 21:49:11 GMT
;D
Where would we be without humour................conscious or unconscious.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2012 22:02:50 GMT
Our hearing has an automatic gain control, a muscle in the ear tightening/loosening the eardrum(my). This not only changes our hearing levels but also other aspects so we hear 'better' in the evening. Several theories as to why exist.
When the eardrum is 'tightened' during the day you might not hear as much details in music but more during the evening. It's where most of the 'mains polution messing up my system' and 'break in' or 'it starts to sound better after a few hours' theories and 'findings' come from. It's just the ears and brain 'relaxing'.
Most people prefer, however, to blame equipment and electrical circumstances over their impecable hearing... after all... our ears tell us it is so thus it must be true and it cannot be the hearing/mindset/menatl state/health/time of (night)/ears/brain that causes this so it MUST be of electric origin.
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Post by freddypipsqueek on Sept 14, 2012 22:06:47 GMT
Is it that we get tired and relax (the muscles).
How many of us find that a bottle of red wine has the same effect ??.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2012 22:12:34 GMT
That's one of the theories at least. Alcohol affects the brain... it's the brain that hears not the ears they are merely one of the input channels of 'perception' as a whole. The ears can be tested by audiologists but the brain is the real puzzle when it comes to perception. Perception and hearing are not the same but closely related. The subject of perception is more interesting to me than electronics. Have been investigating perception for over 20 years. fascinating what the brain is capable off. My rejection of subjective listening is purely based on this together with lots of technical experiments. It turned me from a subjectivist into a non-subjectivist. go figure.. ;D
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Post by freddypipsqueek on Sept 14, 2012 22:25:54 GMT
Agree - Sometimes you're just in the mood.
Also - and not meaning to reduce the quality of the discussion - red wine does seem to do it for me.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2012 23:26:53 GMT
Robin's thread........Listening...........gave the following link. www.audiomisc.co.uk/HFN/hearing/hearthis.htmlAn article first published in Hi Fi News in April 2004 by J. C. G. Lesurf (jcgl@st-and.ac.uk). University of St Andrews, Scotland. From which I took the following. Recent studies of the ears have led to a modern understanding where hearing is physically active. The sensing hair bundles in our ears are linked to small stumulators. These tend to try and physically push the hairs into oscillatory vibrations. In normal circumstances, the push they apply should be too weak to produce any discernable vibration. However the level of this physical stimulus is affected by the movement of the hairs themselves. As a result, the sensor system is an active one, with local feedback. When working correctly, each sensor (hair bundle) is just on the edge of bursting into spontaneous oscillations. This internal ‘push’ makes it much easier for faint sounds to actually move the hairs as the incoming sound is being assisted by the push. In electronics, behaviour of this kind is familiar to engineers as a form of positive feedback. Indeed, some early radio receivers made use of this technique to obtain very high amplification gains from just a single valve. The drawback being a tendency to burst into unwanted oscillations when things get out of hand. The sensitivity of the hairs to external sound will depend upon how much extra ‘push’ the stimulators in the ear are applying. Experiments carried out during the last couple of decades show that the ear quickly adjusts the amount of ‘push’ it applies to each hair bundle, depending upon the sound level. When the sound level is low, the ‘push’ is strong, and the sensitivity is high. Hence at low sound intensity levels, we only require a tiny sound input to make the sensor hairs move because they are being helped along by the internal stimulation. However, when we apply a higher sound level, the ear reacts by lowering the amount of ‘push’ provided by the internal stimulators. As a result. the system has a variable gain built into it response. This quickly adjusts the sensitivity to adapt to the sound level. When our ears are damaged, or sometimes when we are unwell, the gain can become too high and will cause unwanted oscillations (“ringing in the ears”). However in normal situations it means that the size of the sensor vibrations does not grow as quickly as we’d expect as we increase the sound level. Hence our ears can cope with enormous variations in sound power level, yet the amplitude of the sensor vibrations only changes by a much smaller amount. Measurements carried out by researchers have recently shown that the amplitude of the vibrations of the hair bundles tuned to any particular frequency only rises with the cube-root of the size of the vibrational force applied by the sound entering the ear. As a result, an increase of, say, 60 dB (a million-fold change) in the sound level only causes the size of the movement of the hair bundle in the ear to increase by a factor of 10! The result is that our ears can easily cope with a huge range of sound levels. Some of us may find this link of interest also. www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scots_Guide/audio/Analog.htmlJ. C. G. Lesurf (jcgl@st-and.ac.uk). University of St Andrews, Scotland.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 15, 2012 0:09:02 GMT
You have a big red puffy nose ? ;D
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Post by Deleted on Sept 15, 2012 0:13:08 GMT
Hi Alan Late night listening is often better due to a combination of atmospheric conditions and markedly reduced ambient noise levels. Regards Alex Here we go again,Frans at his anti subjectivity best. There are many documented cases of external equipment polluting adjacent mains power. It could be due to a PC next door if living in units,even another one in the same house,faulty fluoros or perhaps even a DIY Class D high powered amplifier with inadequate filtering ! This was intentionally tongue in cheek, but some people are quick to pin anything they can't completely explain on people's imagination , often suggesting how stupid they are for permitting themselves to be fooled . Yes, it can also be due to blood pressure and other causes too.
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ronzo56
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Post by ronzo56 on Sept 15, 2012 1:53:22 GMT
Sorry to go back a bit on this thread, but I'm curious (for the sake of my hearing!) about dB levels for music listening. To satisfy my curiousity, last year I bought a cheap dB meter from Maplins, and I was re-assured to discover that when listening to my speaker system, I usually had it peaking at about 80-85dB. I'd read here and elsewhere that, although this is pretty loud, it's fairly typical for people with a decent hi-fi, and Ian has come up with a similar figure in this thread. More recently, I've tried checking my headphone listening levels, but have discovered that it's much more difficult to get a meaningful figure: if I hold the meter in between the two earpieces, it'll be ridiculously low (60-65dB). However, if I shove the meter's mike right up against one or other earpiece (on my Senn HD600s, say), it'll give a figure peaking up to 85dB, sometimes more, but then I'm thinking I don't really have my ears up against the driver unit, although, on the other hand, it does get 'sealed' by the pads. So what's this trick people are using, involving a CD or cardboard, or both? I have had the same experience at first too. Then after a little research and review of some of my really early physics lessons, I realized that the headphone/ear seems to act more like a coupled resonant cavity and the sounds waves are acoustically coupled to the eardrum. That makes simulating (not stimulating ) the headphone/ ear interface important for a more accurate measurement. I found a site that sells a coupler kit for both IEM's and full size cans. www.digital-recordings.com/coupler/coupler.htmlI was inspired by the aluminum plate coupler (but not the $495 CAD price) and so thought an aluminum CD (with plasticine coating) might get close to acoustical behavior of the bones of the face and the cardboard the tissue. I will be trying experimenting with different materials with more research. Might try two CD's. OK here is the set up for what I am sure will be several great jokes so, what is it Ian? Take the mickey ". ;D The dB meter I use is a Phonic handheld and it has a mic that is on the end of a tube. The tube fits into a hole I made in the cardboard which is glued to the CD. The CD is pressed against the ear pads to form a tight seal and I can take my measurements. They are much higher levels than when I just put the meter inside the pad. They subjectively seem to sound about the same loudness as the readings I get with my speakers. Thought I read that the pressure levels my be higher in the ear, even though the dB's are the same, but can't find the blinking article again. Anybody have any suggestions on different materials or other ways to insert a dB meter into a headphone?? Enjoy the music, Ron
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Post by Deleted on Sept 15, 2012 6:55:20 GMT
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensor_tympani_muscleif you dislike wiki's and think they are not to be trusted, google 'Tensor tympani muscle' it's the automatic gain control of our hearing. The 'active hairs' are more functioning like a fast audio compressor and is to 'fit' the dynamic range of audio signals enteing the ear into the 'limited' dynamic range of the hearing organ. Ron, There is a reason why a dB meter is also called an S.P.L. meter. Sound PRESSURE level meter. Simply because it measures pressure of soundwaves pressing against the microphone membrane. Lift a headphone just slightly off your ear and notice how the bass disappears (as well as lower mids lowering just a tad) that's because it is loosing pressure, it's leaking away and thus less remains to fill the ear duct canal. You can also see this on some of Tyll's graphs where the lows (in the grey lines) drop off on certain headphone positions. So the mids drop only slightly and the highs almost nothing when looking at the graphs. That's because it is a test signal, sinusoidial with equal level across the whole spectrum. The dB meter doesn't differentiate between frequencies unless it is set to dB-A curve in which case the Munson Fletcher curves are used to 'compensate' meaning highs and lows are 'weighed' less (hence A-weighting). Since people hear lows tens of dB's 'softer' than mids and highs (at low level, say 60dB SPL) and about 10dB lower at 80dB SPL and equally loud at 100dB SPL the bass is perceived 'louder' than mids and highs at higher SPL's. When you look at graphs of harmonic content in music, you will thus see lows are loudest 9highets energy/amplitude) and highs are tens of dB lower in amplitude. This is the reason why Ian states he needs a certain volume to 'snap' the bass level into place. At low levels bass seems to 'disappear' and 'comes in' at higher SPL. There is a sweetspot that , depending on the used headphones, lies at different SPL's and is also somewhat different between people. Juding from the headphones Miguel prefers he doesn't like it 'bassy' where Ian (probably as being a musician and having heard the bass played a lot louder) likes it to be more 'inline' and thus Miguel plays 'softer' than Ian to get a 'focussed' kind of music. Anyway... since the bass contains MOST of the SPL and this quickly 'leaks away' when a seal is broken leaving only mids and highs that have a lower amplitude in music the SPL meter drops rapidly as well. So the seal is needed to get 'accurate' levels. Add a fw dB for the peaks as fast transients aren't measured correctly in the 'fast' mode of cheap dB meters. So the CD or cardboard or whatever material is needed to create the seal and keep the SPL trapped inside. For speakers it works different as the whole room is now the 'pressure chamber' and we walk around in it. This is why music outdoors requires such huge amounts of power and efficiency because backwaves and lower soundwaves that bend around the speaker are reflected back in rooms but not in open air. Everybody should listen to music they like, via gear they like at listening levels they prefer. There is NO universal 'correct' level. about kids and their 'preferences' Everything revolves around 'being seen/noticed/followed/popularity' for MOST (certainly not all youngsters. Being seen with anything else but i-phone, Bjorn Borg underware, expensive clothing, shoes and expensive 'flashy' headphones is everything there simply is nothing more important. Most are too young to appreciate finer things yet. This feature has to 'ripe' with the years. And... did YOU listen to your parents/teachers when you were young ? Did YOU always do what you were told ? Did YOU think (at a young age) that all adults are 'old fashined' and don't understand their 'ways' ? Kids don't like to be told they are wrong, just like when we are older... the same thing happens but now it's due to 'the vast' experience (wisdom) that life has brought them. Yes, I am nearing that age also so will be subjected to it as well. That's life.
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Post by JohnnyBlue on Sept 15, 2012 6:56:57 GMT
There's so much more to this than I'd ever thought possible: fascinating stuff, all the above.
Just to concentrate on the ear simulation: when we stick our dB meters through our cards/CDs/plasticine moulds of our pinna/auricle, don't we need to take account of the fact that our ear drum (tympanum) is quite a few mm down a tube, so the meter mike needs to be a similar distance?
(I'm beginning to wish I hadn't asked!)
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Post by Deleted on Sept 15, 2012 7:00:42 GMT
Instead of being paranoid about all this, perhaps we should just use common sense, now knowing what damage can result from lengthy exposure to loud noise or music ? Regards Alex
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Post by Deleted on Sept 15, 2012 7:03:10 GMT
It may be louder because the mic is too close to the driver or there are a lot of reflections coming from the material covering the pads.
There was some other theory about hearing at night that I once saw. This article claimed that in the dark, cave men had to listen very carefully for predators and so the great Almighty had a night gain control fitted.
Great, all these theories. It's not actually louder but subjectively louder.
So if you measure the db's the reading will be the same, so according to the great objectivist in the sky- there CAN'T be any difference. The db meter says the same. However, the naughty subjectivist HEARS a loudness difference.
Ears are working the same way, db meter says the same.
It's just dark outside.
One thing that can't be measured and both subjectivists and objectivists agree........ It sounds different!! Yay.
Sent from my iPod touch using ProBoards
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Post by Deleted on Sept 15, 2012 7:10:56 GMT
Just to concentrate on the ear simulation: when we stick our dB meters through our cards/CDs/plasticine moulds of our pinna/auricle, don't we need to take account of the fact that our ear drum (tympanum) is quite a few mm down a tube, so the meter mike needs to be a similar distance? (I'm beginning to wish I hadn't asked!) Nope the sound pressure is about the same as it is a closed chamber. The 'duct' does have some resonances but since we hear what reaches our ears our brain simply accepts natural sounds as natural sounds.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 15, 2012 7:13:27 GMT
That's indeed one of the other 'theories' why this is so. There are more of them The dB meter stuff is explained in post # 41. At least that's the theory/practice I know of. EXACTLY !
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Post by Deleted on Sept 15, 2012 7:20:12 GMT
It can't be measured because it is personal and people ears and brains as well as training differs. It can be investigated though. Did lots of that and, as said, is far more interesting than electronics.
Pinky and the brain brain brain brain (from the great animation 'Animaniacs')
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ronzo56
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Post by ronzo56 on Sept 15, 2012 7:29:10 GMT
This is why I love this forum. Intelligent, funny discussions and exchanges from well informed people or people who want to be better informed. You caught me with my head in a dark place Frans. I just used my SPL to measure how loud my room is during labs. It's louder than my headphones so I don't know what I'm worried about. . All good and true points about the young. That's why I like working with them more than most adults. I still don't listen. Ask my wife. ;D. Enjoy the weekend, Ron
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Post by Deleted on Sept 15, 2012 7:31:11 GMT
Is the echo there 'cos my head's hollow and has lots of back reflections? Perception is a strange thing - even that symbol I just used is supposed to represent 'angry' when to me it looks more like, 'I'm a bit crazy!!' I agree, it is very interesting because it's the biggest uncertainty in hi fi. Perceptions can be quite variable, in sight, taste and hearing so descriptions can be a little tricky. Measuring devices is truthful but measuring certain things and maybe there are other variables to take into consideration as well that we haven't even thought of yet. Subjective stuff is risky because with an objective view, you can't be wrong within the constraints of what you are measuring. That's why the 'evil twin' was so secure in his writing. He KNEW he was right within the parameters he set for himself. BTW, I notice now that some are having a quip at the so called 'perfect' amp. That made me smile. I'm off to pick up my T1 and post the review one off now ....
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