HEARING DEGRADATION - A PERSONAL ACCOUNT

Abstract

This paper is a report of the progressive hearing degradation as it affected the author’s perception whilst working as a designer of recording studios and loudspeaker systems. The many symptoms include presbycusis, tinnitus, and loudness recruitment, together with some strange perceptions of non-linear distortion. The implications are far-ranging because all forms of reproduced sound are ultimately assessed by people’s ears, even though it can be difficult to fully imagine the changes to perception until they occur. However, once experienced, it also becomes clear that the changes are idiosyncratic, with the combinations affecting no two people in exactly the same way. Furthermore, only once experienced does it become obvious that referring many reproduction standards to ‘normal’ hearing parameters may be short-changing a large proportion of the population, because what is ‘average’ may not be representative of any majority.