Aging Ears or Shot Ears or Both ??

[mdconnelly]

How well you do on a hearing test is not a measure of how much you enjoy listening to music.   I know my 67 year-old ears aren't once what they were.   After all, I spent a few years back in the mid 70s working sound for a few rock bands.   But I absolutely cherish just listening to music and it still sounds extraordinary to me.   My wife has been pushing me to get my ears tested (I think she confuses my ability to hear her with my desire to at times .   But to be honest, I don't think I want to know because then I'll wonder what I'm missing.   Right now, I'm not missing anything - just loving the sound of music.

[BobM]

Here's some info that might explain why you may be able to hear your stereo but can;t hear your wife call you fron the other room ...

According to the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders, men are twice as likely to experience hearing loss, but are less likely than women to seek help. Men are also less likely to talk about their hearing loss.

When it comes to hearing loss men tend to lose their ‘hearing’ in the higher frequency levels first. For women, hearing loss generally occurs in the lower level frequencies.

How does this affect communication between the sexes? This means men are less likely to understand consonants, and women are less likely to understand vowels. As you can imagine, this creates an array of misunderstandings and can strain a relationship. At last, an explanation for miscommunication!

[_Scotty_]

WHAT!  I've had mild to medium ringing in my ears for about a decade which seems to be aggravated by exposure to certain upper midrange frequencies as well as sheer SPL of the sound. Occasionally it is hard to get to sleep.
 The biggest change in my hearing occurred over 20 years ago when I had some sort of infection for a little less than a week. The entire stereo image shifted to the left channel of the system. It wasn't obvious that there was any problem with my hearing. A thorough job of troubleshooting the stereo system showed that it was not at fault.
 That left my hearing as the only remaining source of the problem. Fortunately a good audiologist was readily found. An examination showed that I had very good hearing and both ears had the same frequency response limits as well as very similar response within the limits of the testing procedure.
 However my right ear now was - 6db at 250Hz. The frequency response was back to flat at 125Hz and 500Hz.
I bitched to the audiologist about this and got zero simpathy. He informed me that most peoples ears typically had  as large or larger deviations in response between them and that I had nothing to complain about.
 As there was nothing to be done about it I went home and learned to live with the mismatch. At some point over the next few weeks I noticed that the stereo image was once again centered.  The only time the dip in response showed up was when I listened to a phone conversation with my right ear instead of my left. Intelligibility suffered compared to the left ear.
 My conclusion is that the sense of hearing has some odd quirks about it. I can understand why people may even not be aware of a problem until it is pretty severe. One accepts things that are not normal as normal if the problem has a slow onset. Damm insidious crap.
Scotty.