Most of us start losing out ability to hear higher sounds in one’s twenties.
It would be an interesting experiment, my bet is you hear no difference.
It is good to keep in mind if you hear 13,000Hz you are missing less than an octave of very high frequencies. Trivial if looked at objectively.
I found the article interesting due to my mid to high end hearing loss - making conversations and nuanced music listening a real effort. As was stated in earlier posts, no mention of a way to ameliorate tinnitus, which is the bane of my existence. In my case, I hear multiple frequencies in both ears. Rather like having several high speed drills revving in my ears at all times.
And then there is the ancient practice of embracing the sounds we hear within as a characteristic of the human experience, the energy vibrating within us. This energy has several characteristics, sound being one, light and vibration as well. I have spoken to a number of people recently who have had lengthy bouts of tinnitus due to long Covid, one, my friend, a well known opera singer hospitalized with overwhelming internal sound, which slowly receded. Embracing the internal aspects of our being opens us to the realm of our more subtle nature, of what we are within, vibration, light, sound.
I’m not too concerned about it and actually just discovered it while doing the room sweeps. I can hear very well at all freq’s below 13k. It starts to fade at 12k and is completely gone at 13k.
I see your point but I wouldn’t go so far as embracing it rather than try to ignore it. The end result can be the same. I still enjoy my music collection and my gear daily. The disheartening aspect of my situation is the rapidity at which the tinnitus is increasing. It can sometimes be as difficult to ignore as the 800 pound gorilla in the room.
I’ve had loud tinnitus in one ear since the early '80’s and in both ears for a couple of decades. I’m glad that it’s relatively constant and I don’t seem to be bothered emotionally by it. But, no, it’s nothing to embrace, it masks almost all beeps from remotes, I haven’t heard crickets forever, I can’t reliably understand speech, much music is quite sterile compared to my memories of it. I can count on one hand the number of times in the last decade I had a moment of quiet (Ironically after playing music too loud.) I do consider myself lucky because I know many with much worse relationships with their tinnitus. But I’ve been blessed with healing in other ways so I’m not complaining overall and, in spite of my constant companion, enjoy life.
Gratitude is the foundation of happiness.
Amen
I love your phrase, “in spite of my constant companion, enjoy life”. And embracing, or concentrating, meditating, focusing on that inner sound as an aspect of one’s self, takes one beyond the mental processes to which one can begin to have the perspective that there is more to this thing that I am than this mental construct i have learned to be. Reminds me of Paul’s article from yesterday.
Paul’s April 12th article on Planck… stimulating
My two cents on this is that sweeps and sine tones are nothing like music. Well - maybe if you’re a massive minimalist electronica fan😝 But much as a certain website (which shall remain unspoken) IMHO misses the boat by equating measurements to the performance and quality of gear - it is an easy and seemingly rational assumption that they’re equivalent in some ways. And we’ve all been tested by audiologists all our lives with sine tones.
I’d felt this fundamental (haha) disconnect between sine tones and music for a long time - despite knowing that measurement is useful in some ways and in certain situations. For example, I’m glad I can identify certain frequencies when I’m mixing a track, because it saves time if you know that drums can get congested around 400Hz, say. But that doesn’t imply that hearing a single frequency is a replacement for the subjective experience of the complexity of listening to music.
A friend of mine is one of the better “hearers” of music I know - that is, he can identify subtle and complex aspects of a piece of music, the sounds of the instruments, the qualities of the recordings, etc. - without being technical at all with regard to music recording and production. When he was over once, I was playing him something in the studio, and he mentioned he definitely seemed to be losing his upper hearing. Did I have the ability to play back a sine sweep?
Sure - so I played a 20Hz-20kHz sweep that takes about a minute. At a bit after 3k passed, he asked if it was still playing. I looked at him somewhat shocked, and said yeah. He kept asking as the minute progressed, and I kept saying yeah until my hearing “gave out” around 13-15k. We went over it again, and then listened to specific tones, and I swept around the area of 3k. He “could not hear anything” above that. As an aside - notice that the bits in quotes are perfectly normal ways to talk about this.
He listens to and enjoys music all the time. Yes, there are certainly things he doesn’t hear. But the vast majority of the experience, including some very subtle stuff I would have thought were impossible for him to perceive are in fact perceivable by him without prompting. I don’t know quite why this is, but I’m happy it is true, both for him and for the rest of us. There are many famous designers and musicians with “compromised” hearing. What this says to me is that a lifetime of experience in listening is not something that is lost in direct proportion to the ability to hear sine tones.
Agreed. It was posted more for info and discussion than analysis.
I dont miss what I dont hear. 
or know 
Or forgot. 
Beef to Young Whippersnappers, “I’ve Forgotten more than you’ve ever heard!!” 
I just took a look at a music freq chart and there isn’t much above 6k anyway.
Except (at the bottom of the chart) “Definition” and “Air.” Two of the more expen$ive attributes audiophiles seek out.
As well as “Sibilance” and “Pierce,” which audiophiles tend to avoid.
Cool stuff ! Thanks for posting.
There is a tremendous amount of timbrel information up to 15kHz or so. These overtones define the sound of an instrument.
BTW, the sound of a muted trumpet can reach ~ 50kHz. The overtones are astounding with some instruments.
Elk, are you saying that despite playing that incredibly loud instrument for decades, you can still hear to 50k?!?
Opera singers go deaf singing next to one another.
Elk have acute hearing!
I think it is just less stuff for me to worry about getting “just right”
Here’s a good article from Pass Labs. The last line is a good one. If it was already mentioned then please ignore the post.