I also had an experience where i felt my speakers were distorting at high levels,i went to the bathroom and while walking away i noticed the distorsion was gone,coming back i put in ear plugs and the distorsion was gone,ear intristic distorsion sounds super nasty,it is kinda like intermodulation distorsion,where another lower phantom frequency was added,worse than clipping an amplifier or hitting the displacement limit of a particular driver.Also the human hearing is not the same at different levels,hence why i prefer flatter for higher levels,look up a fletcher munson curve to get the idea better
Point is humans are built with very loose tolerances(hence why we survived for this long),so there may not be anything inherently wrong with your hearing
Or your preferred EQ is just a little more than some people design in (see excerpt/link below). There's a reason some speakers have a more mellow presentation. Their designer was probably like you (and me). I often fight with the 3-5k range on new designs. A dB or two in the right zone can make a lot of difference.
Air blow-off guns, vacuum generators, and various other noises pierce through me when other people don't seem to care at all.
If you haven't stumbled across them yet, there are also "hi-fi" earplugs that have a more linear frequency response and reduce the level less. Etymotic has been making them awhile.
https://www.linkwitzlab.com/models.htm#H
"Around 3 kHz our hearing is less sensitive to diffuse fields. Recording microphones, though, are usually flat in frequency response even under diffuse field conditions. When such recordings are played back over loudspeakers, there is more energy in the 3 kHz region than we would have perceived if present at the recording venue and a degree of unnaturalness is introduced.
This applies primarily to recordings of large orchestral pieces in concert halls where the microphones are much closer to the instruments than any listener. At most listening positions in the hall the sound field has strong diffuse components.
I use a dip of 4 dB (x1.gif, 2760NF) to equalize for this. The circuit consists of R, C and L in series, forming a frequency dependent ladder attenuator in conjunction with the 5.11k ohm source resistor. You may choose to make the notch filter selectable with a switch for different types of recordings.
I have found through my own head-related recordings of symphonic music that the dip adds greater realism, especially to large chorus and to soprano voice and allows for higher playback levels."
Thank you. This is a very detailed explanation of the phenomenon. I feel the same about "scooping" out that frequency range, it makes everything sound more "glued together" instead of having some notes or sounds that stick out too much. It sounds unnatural.
I don't listen to much orchestral music but even with other kinds of music it probably comes down to the differences between my hearing and the one of the "average" man (the mastering engineer) that doesn't have sensitive ears.
...also, hifi earplugs? Do I need to have silver stranded auditory nerves or they also work with regular nerves? What happens if I invert them, will I blow my hearing?
/s
I don't listen to much orchestral music but even with other kinds of music it probably comes down to the differences between my hearing and the one of the "average" man (the mastering engineer) that doesn't have sensitive ears.
...also, hifi earplugs? Do I need to have silver stranded auditory nerves or they also work with regular nerves? What happens if I invert them, will I blow my hearing?
/s
It's hard to describe it with words but that's how I feel. They feel "louder" in a sense that in order to get the same effect of "annoyance" I need to boost those frequencies if I keep the volume down.
It's exactly like this. It still is very odd to me that the ear can "generate" distortion on its own!
Apparently, the fact that the human auditory system generates distortion of its own has been known since the 18th century.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3578393/
In another thread, I was curious if playing an acoustic guitar could be negatively effecting my hearing. I mentioned the 'distortion' component of it and noted that it carried across sound sources. Two themes I see repeated here.
Something that seemingly exacerbated my latest episode (causing me to write about it) was the use of a couple of power tools. Outside. One was a wet/dry plastic canister vacuum with a well known, cant stand ya shriek, which I actually connected to a Variac in an attempt to tone it down some. The other was a cheap "Chicago Electric" reciprocating saw I used to cut roots out of a patch of ground (a honey-do job..)
Both brushed AC/DC motors having that characteristic scream to them.
Now, one wouldnt think these sound sources could do anything bad (Acoustic guitar? Outside?) but perhaps they just needled the right hair. Makes me wonder if hearing resilience goes down, perhaps way down, as one ages. PRR, thanks for providing the hearing protection product link.
Both brushed AC/DC motors having that characteristic scream to them.
Now, one wouldnt think these sound sources could do anything bad (Acoustic guitar? Outside?) but perhaps they just needled the right hair. Makes me wonder if hearing resilience goes down, perhaps way down, as one ages. PRR, thanks for providing the hearing protection product link.
Yes.
How's the hair on your head? Even if you retain some, it's gone thinner. And all it has to do is keep your dome warm. The "hairs" in the innner ear (not the same kind of hair) have to move in a very specific way to allow a positive feedback loop to raise small sounds. In the most common old-male deafness the first step is loss of that boost to high-frequency low-level sounds. The hairs "work" but without supercharge. Later of course they basically die.
Some reviewers of the Fnova muffs say the 3M Peltor are better. That is not my experience (after over a decade with the Peltor). Others say Leight are better, I have not tried them. I'm certainly not going by numbers because I know too much about cheating acoustic tests.
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I’ve had this issue for years, discovered it when I started building Full Range speakers. Some years ago I mapped out my hearing by listening to a tone generator and I can point to 3 specific frequencies bands that ’hit a nerve’. Some of these are in the frequency range being discussed here. If I remember, the most irritating centred on 5kHz (e.g. female voice sibilance, but note also there’s an ear concha resonance here too), another at around 9kHz, a lesser one around 2kHz (ear canal resonances are common at this frequency).
I think it’s called Hyperacusis and I believe in my case it’s possibly some damage from listening to my old PMC FB1’s waaaaay too loud with tweeters screaming away….
I think it’s called Hyperacusis and I believe in my case it’s possibly some damage from listening to my old PMC FB1’s waaaaay too loud with tweeters screaming away….
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I have this with certain types of sound. I always have had. Sibilance, eating noises in general, and also that noise that close mikes pick up that broadcasters call "lip smack". I don't like anything close miked, even something like people walking on gravel or through grass. It all has that "fingernails on blackboard" effect on me.
Exactly this. I find the sound to be considerably 'cleaner' and the instruments better separated when wearing earplugs at loud gigs even though their attenuation spectrum is far from linear! Any system, no matter how good (like my own😉), sounds like its midrange is simply screaming at me above a level of 100dB or so.
PS. By far the most interesting thread here in a long time - thanks for starting it. Psychoacoustics is an important area of our hobby but remains poorly represented on forums...
I've had a peculiarity with my hearing since I was a child: I could hear that the television set was on (old tube televisions). Even if the sound in it was at zero, I still knew who in the other room had the TV on.
I am sensitive to the sound in my phone chargers and I could hear a special sound in the power supply of my laptop.
I read once that some people have "Darwin 's hillock" in their ear. It's a rudiment, it doesn't carry anything. It's left over from ancient times. Some people can hear more sound because of it. Check your ear, do you have one of these? I only have it on one, but I have two Darwin's hillock at once.
I am sensitive to the sound in my phone chargers and I could hear a special sound in the power supply of my laptop.
I read once that some people have "Darwin 's hillock" in their ear. It's a rudiment, it doesn't carry anything. It's left over from ancient times. Some people can hear more sound because of it. Check your ear, do you have one of these? I only have it on one, but I have two Darwin's hillock at once.
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And then it could be a medical hearing problem known as Hyperacusis.
more at:
https://hyperacusis.net/
more at:
https://hyperacusis.net/
It seems to me that Hyperacusis and Darwin's tubercle (at first I misspelled "Darwin's hillock") are different things. Darwin's tubercle is congenital from birth. And Hyperacusis has more to do with mental aspects, like depression or mental disturbance.
Yeah that's hyperacusis alright. I have the exact same thing. Lip smack will make me turn off any podcast after only a few seconds. Use a noise gate, podcaster people! And speak up! 😛
Fascinating stuff. I have both Darwin's tubercle and hyperacusis. Neither one ever bothered me, though. And my mental state is a-ok, at least that's what the voices in my head tell me.
Does anyone else with hyperacusis or Darwin's tubercle find headphones EQ'd to the 'harman target' sound absolutely horrible? I tried it on multiple headphones and find the treble grating and insufferable. Can't stand it for more than a few minutes.
I have similar issues. As others have mentioned there are many aspects, from the listener's physiology to the recording equipment and technique, but I have mostly addressed the issue from a perspective similar to Allen's; the engineering of the speaker.
A 6" driver will begin to breakup and beam at around 750hz, a 3" driver at around 1500hz. At typical tweeter crossover frequencies the woofer or mid are well into breakup and beaming, while the polar radiation pattern is mismatched with the tweeter unless addressed.
These are all reasons why the "BBC dip" was so effective. I either build dipoles, or sealed speakers with very small tweeter housings I turn on the lathe and robust tweeters that can do low crossover frequencies in the 1500 to 1800hz range coupled to smaller mid/woofs of 4" and under for my own listening. This helps mitigate the harshness.
A 6" driver will begin to breakup and beam at around 750hz, a 3" driver at around 1500hz. At typical tweeter crossover frequencies the woofer or mid are well into breakup and beaming, while the polar radiation pattern is mismatched with the tweeter unless addressed.
These are all reasons why the "BBC dip" was so effective. I either build dipoles, or sealed speakers with very small tweeter housings I turn on the lathe and robust tweeters that can do low crossover frequencies in the 1500 to 1800hz range coupled to smaller mid/woofs of 4" and under for my own listening. This helps mitigate the harshness.
Don’t worry. Some people are more sensitive in hearing. I also remember when i was a child we had crt TV. If i came home i could tell that tv is on in another room. Even the sound is turned off. It was more kind off feel not actual buzzing or something. Some kind of high frequencies.
From what you say i think you have to be annoyed often by very bad reproduction quality in loud concerts. Sensitive ear can’t tolerate much. And guess you are that guy who has to find quiet spot in concert while everybody feels ok. Just talking from my experience and i think i understand you