# Bad hearing and room treatments



## Guest (Oct 12, 2008)

My hearing hits a brick wall at 1.8Khz. I do love bass as it's about all I have left. If most dialog is at or below this, could sound treatments help? If I have correct information, much dialog is in the 2 to 3Khz. area. Wish I could find a demo place to listen to room treated properly to tell what this may do for me. Should I pursue room treatments? How do I decide? Any Idea's?
Bill


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## joe457 (Aug 23, 2008)

I thought I'd read somewhere that the speaking range for men was 85hz-185hz and women was higher like 150hz-300hz?


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## Guest (Oct 12, 2008)

joe457 said:


> I thought I'd read somewhere that the speaking range for men was 85hz-185hz and women was higher like 150hz-300hz?


Your are closer than I, after more searching found even a soprano singer does not get much over 1Khz. So just maybe I'm still able to improve my room for dialog at least. Of course music gets way up into the higher area, like violin and harp, so no way I would hear these instruments, I suppose that is why I like music with lot of bass.


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## joe457 (Aug 23, 2008)

I use to have a hard time understanding dialog unless I kept the volume up. Things improved a great deal after replacing my RCA sats with 5 Ascend HTM-200SE sats, the 11db hole from 100hz to 200hz became a 5db hole. Tomorrow I'm expecting a pair of GIK 244 bass traps and hope they will further improve the lower end?


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## eugovector (Sep 4, 2006)

I'm sorry for your condition, Bill. I couldn't imagine (out of all of my sense, hearing would be the last I'd want to forgo).

I do think that treatments will help you. Dialogue intelligibility is one of the benefits I cite most often we talking about my experience with treating a room. Before I was cranking the volume just to understand dialogue. Now, I can listen at volumes low enough not to wake anyone without fear of missing a line.

Any decent dealer should have an acoustically treated room, and if you can make it to any of the conventions and conferences with products on display, there will be folks selling treatments anxious to have you experience the benefits. I think it was at HES when Rives had two identical room set up, one with treatment and one without.

But, I'd take a chance with $100 of fiberglass (OC703) and just try leaning the raw panels in appropriate places in your listening room (being careful not to fill the air with particles). If you like the effect, do up some DIY traps. If you don't notice a difference, find someone in FL to buy it off you.

My 2 cents. Take care of what you have left, and best of luck.


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## Kal Rubinson (Aug 3, 2006)

bill-merritt said:


> Your are closer than I, after more searching found even a soprano singer does not get much over 1Khz. So just maybe I'm still able to improve my room for dialog at least. Of course music gets way up into the higher area, like violin and harp, so no way I would hear these instruments, I suppose that is why I like music with lot of bass.


Those are fundamentals but the overtones and the sibilants that give words and voices intelligibility are in the 3k-4k range. So, I am pretty sure you hear the voices but you are having difficulty interpreting what is said or sung.

Kal


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## Guest (Oct 13, 2008)

Yes your absolutely correct! Unfortunately most all movies on DVD are recorded with so much background music and special effects that I even had difficulty understanding movie dialog before my hearing loss. Thank goodness for subtitles, even my wife with very good hearing has problems with movie dialog.


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## rsmith42 (Mar 13, 2007)

Bill,

My sincerest sympathies at your hearing loss. I may be able to shed some light on the topic of speech intelligibility. My background is audio/acoustic design for medical devices, sound reinforcement for live events, remote recording, studio recording and AES membership.

Typical frequency specifications quoted for the telephony industry is 300 to 3400 Hz. Unfortunately that has been the precedence since the first characterizations by the telephone business. The lower frequencies are where all the vowels exist. Consonants occupy much higher frequencies in the speech spectrum. Sibilants, fricatives, etc have energy up to 15 KHz. Some start their energy at 7 KHz and above. For details please reference Acoustics by Leo Beranek. Notice how cell users are constantly repeating or asking for repeats on phrases. 300-3400 Hz combined with lossy compression creates some very challenges for intelligibility. There is a fellow at Nortel that has argued (rightly in my opinion) that we are going the wrong way. Bandwidth should be increased to at least 8KHz. So what does all this have to do with A/V? The 300-3400 Hz speech bandwidth is permeated throughout the studio and broadcast business with less and less real engineers employed to keep the bean counters from doing mindless things with the audio.

Now there are some who are genuinely interested in changing the situation. I was at the AES convention in San Francisco week before last and attended some broadcast sessions and some paper sessions on this very topic. I won't repeat all but rather reference some papers for further reading if you are inclined:

AES preprint 7628 - Speech enhancement of movie sound
AES prepring 7627 - Aging and sound perception: Desirable characteristics of entertainment audio for the elderly (implies hearing impairment in general)

Several manufacturers of equipment for broadcasters are looking at solutions (both for studio surround work as well as broadcast) for handling dialogue vs music - See Orban loudness meter as one example. The BBC has an experimenta radial metering system utilizing the ITU-R 1770 loudness standard, etc.

Finally, protect your hearing. Watch sound levels. I met the assistant to the fellow that set the OSHA standards for SPL by duration. His later research has led him to believe that the chart is too liberal and all those numbers should be reduced by 5 dB.

bobs


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## bpape (Sep 14, 2006)

Kal is spot on about the sibilants. The fundamentals of male and femail vocals start around 200Hz and go up to around 800Hz or so.

Bryan


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## Guest (Nov 4, 2008)

:clap:Thanks for all the feedback on my bad hearing problem!

:jump:An update! I just purchased a new Onkyo TX-SR876 receiver and when using the new Audyssey dynamic EQ and Dynamic volume set to light, I now can understand more than 95% of dialog in most movies. This is a real treat for me not having to always use subtitles. This new technology also lets me hear very close to what reference level audio sounds like, but at a lower more comfortable volume. The sound of my PC-13Ultra sub. never sounded so good, it's like having heard it's potential for the first time! All I can say is for me the new Audyssey Dynamic sound feature works wonders for me! I highly recommend a newer receiver with this option!


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