Dr Doug Beck interviews experts Dr Brian Moore and Richard Einhorn on sound quality, amplification, and factors that influence the perceived quality of live versus recorded music.
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Sensaphonics, a hearing conservation company that designs custom-fitted earphones and electronics to achieve safe, high-resolution audio, held its first Gold Circle seminar of 2016 in Chicago on May 20-21.
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Frequency compression can be useful to avoid dead regions in the cochlea for speech, but this does not follow for music. The difference is that in damaged regions—typically in the higher frequencies—speech has a “continuous” spectrum, whereas music is always a “discrete” or “line” spectrum regardless of frequency.
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When exposure to noise or music occurs, the Temporary Hearing Loss Test app addresses the important issue of whether there has been a temporary threshold shift (TTS) or not, and if so, how much, providing invaluable long-term prevention information.
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Dr Chasin recounts how, as a graduate student of audiology, he was taken to the desert with geophones and radar equipment. As part of his early training, he had to measure and explain the strange, musical sounds that emanate from sand dunes during the summertime.
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Sensaphonics introduced on April 1 its new EARbags, an Excess Audio Reduction system for musicians and others that makes in-ear monitoring safer. When secured to in-ear monitors, headphones or earbuds, the ear bags protect the user against dangerous spikes in sound levels.
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Westone will become the provider of custom-fit earphones for the Levo System in North America. The earphones are designed to ensure comfort during sleep and allow for optimal positioning and controlled delivery of sound therapy through the Levo System.
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Dr Chasin argues that the PCAST category of a “basic” hearing aid for mild-to-moderate hearing loss was misnamed, and should be “hearing aids for conductive hearing loss.” With a conductive hearing loss, an OTC “reading glasses approach” might work, but a sensorineural hearing loss is entirely different.
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Signia, the new hearing aid brand from Sivantos, has unveiled primax, described as the company’s most advanced hearing aid platform to date, and the first technology clinically proven by independent studies to reduce listening effort throughout the day while providing “better than normal” hearing in challenging listening environments.
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Starkey released a new group of hearing solutions, powered by a new platform and the Acuity OS operating system. The “Made for Life” launch includes Halo 2 Made for iPhone hearing aids; Muse hearing aids, and the SoundLens Synergy wireless platform.
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Marshall Chasin, AuD, looks at how the Speech Intelligibility Index, or SII, can provide information on the various speech sounds or phonemes, but does not provide information on word-level and sentence-level cues that may be very important as well, particularly for bilingual patients.
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There are a lot of things that might be changed in hearing assessment, treatment, and hearing aid fittings. Here are opinions from 5 long-time hearing care professionals who address some of their pet peeves…frequency lowering, speech in noise, the value of the audiogram and first fits, and more. Read the rants from Marshall Chasin, Laurel Christensen, Doug Beck, Calvin Staples, and Wayne Staab.
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The Speech Intelligibility Index (or SII) shows some interesting characteristics. The difference between 340 Hz and 3,400 Hz (coincidentally the bandwidth of the telephone) is fairly similar for continuous discourse, whereas there is a high frequency bias for nonsense syllables. That is, whenever there is a context to speech, there is a greater reliance on lower frequency sounds.
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Researchers at the University of Illinois found that some patients who suffer from tinnitus, or ringing in the ears, use different brain regions when processing emotional information. While many tinnitus patients are forced to limit daily activities as a result of debilitating symptoms, others adapt to the condition. Why?
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Dr Steve Aiken joins Dr Marshall Chasin in a discussion of differing definitions of sound. Together they explore the scientific facts that help to answer the philosophical question: If a tree falls in the forest, but there is no one there to hear it, does it produce a sound?
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