For audio engineers and musicians with high-frequency hearing loss, it’s not enough to simply boost frequencies to match their audiogram.
By Marshall Chasin, AuD
Say you have an audio engineer or musician come into your clinic who, after an audiometric assessment, you find has an audiometric notch at 4000 Hz of 50 dB of hearing loss and perhaps a 35 dB hearing loss at 6000 Hz, but otherwise has normal hearing. This person may not be a candidate for a hearing aid, but wishes to assure themselves that their equalized music is “correct,” meaning that what they think is correct is what music listeners with normal hearing would hear.
What should you tell them?
In the “olden” days, we would, erroneously in my opinion, counsel them to correct for roughly half of their hearing loss, and in this case that would be a +25 dB correction at 4000 Hz. But is this correct?
The one thing that equalizers (and also in-ear monitors) cannot currently do is provide level-dependent equalizations that depend on the input. They are static. An equalizer may be set to provide 25 dB of boost at 4000 Hz, and this would be the case regardless of whether the music was soft or loud. It may be possible to build an equalizer to provide different amounts of boost (and also different amounts of attenuation) depending on the input sound levels, but this would be called a “hearing aid.” Until such a person actually is fit with hearing aids with level-dependent abilities, what can we recommend for their equalizer settings when listening to music?
| 2000 Hz | 3000 Hz | 4000 Hz | 6000 Hz | |
| 80 dB SPL | 2 dB | 7 dB | 17 dB | 13 dB |
| 65 dB SPL | 6 dB | 11 dB | 20 dB | 17 dB |
| 50 dB SPL | 13 dB | 16 dB | 24 dB | 19 dB |
Table 1: The NAL NL-2 prescribed gain for a 50 dB hearing loss at 4000 Hz
We know from equal loudness contours that less correction/amplification is required for higher level inputs than softer ones. This strategy underlays the way we currently fit hearing aids: less gain for louder level inputs (e.g., 80 dB SPL) and more gain for softer level inputs (e.g., 50 dB SPL). Indeed, a value of roughly 24-25 dB of correction at 4000 Hz can be calculated for soft level inputs such as 50 dB SPL. But for sound levels that are more typical of the level that sound engineers would equalize at, or are typical of listening to live music, the equalization settings would be much lower.
For someone with a 50 dB hearing loss notch in their audiogram at 4000 Hz, for equalizing or listening to live music, a value closer to +17 dB would be closer to real-life requirements. An equalization recommendation of 24-25 dB would make the music too bright and tinny. However, this of course also depends on the level that a sound recording engineer would perform their equalizations at. Anecdotally, the levels are anywhere between 75 dBA and 90 dBA. If the level is closer to 90 dBA, then an equalization of only several decibels may be necessary, if at all.
And if such a person does decide to try amplification, perhaps only when playing and/or listening to their music, then there are plenty of hearing aid options to consider.
Marshall Chasin, AuD, is an audiologist and the director of auditory research at the Musicians’ Clinics of Canada, adjunct professor at the University of Toronto, and adjunct associate professor at Western University. You can contact him at [email protected].
Featured image: Dreamstime
Original citation for this article: Chasin M. Back to Basics: What should we tell audio engineers about equalizations for their hearing loss? Hearing Review. 2026;33(5):8.
