[darkarn]

As per title, as I delved further into the audiophle world, I started to realise that I will like and need to have a good understanding of the human hearing system. How and where should I use to learn more, especially if they are written for fellow audiophiles to understand? Or rather, what websites et.c. did you all use to read up about it? Am asking as I am unsure of the correct vocabulary to use in search engines

 

[SoundAndMotion]

You could google "hearing tutorial" or "how hearing works". I found several videos, but most seem too elementary or contain inaccuracies that annoy me.

This one is pretty good (link). Also, you can start with the Wikipedia article (link), and the video on that page is nice, except the stereocilia of the hair cells do not float freely in the fluid, nor do they directly transduce the sound waves in the fluid. The other video explains that much better. The rest of the Wikipedia video is good. I didn't read the whole Wiki article, but such articles are often a nice starting place.

If that is all too elementary for you, and you want a more in-depth treatment, I can send you the chapter on hearing from a neuroscience textbook.

Edit: @castleofargh 's link is much better than mine!!

 

[castleofargh]

This should do nicely: https://umotion.univ-lemans.fr/medi...3-b720-3b49a64991e2/denorms_ts3_jambrosic.pdf
there is a lot of information about the mechanisms of hearing, some models of perception, the concept of masking, HRTF, etc. And at the same time it's not going so deep into each area that we need much knowledge to grasp what is being presented. It should at least give you some clues about what you're looking for specifically.

I'm going to be blunt about stuff made for audiophiles. They tend to be full of crap. The worst ones mix facts and marketing pseudoscience, so unless you already know the subject in depth, you end up thinking that everything is very convincing. They're very dangerous resources for beginners and I wish someone had kept me far away from them when I first came with my newbie questions a few years ago.

 

[old tech]

There is a some info from Monty in the link below under "Gentlemen, meet your ears" which has an 'audiophile' flavour.
https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

 

[bigshot]

The Most Important Spec Sheet: The Human Ear
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/the-most-important-spec-sheet-the-human-ear.645851/

 

[darkarn]

You could google "hearing tutorial" or "how hearing works". I found several videos, but most seem too elementary or contain inaccuracies that annoy me.

This one is pretty good (link). Also, you can start with the Wikipedia article (link), and the video on that page is nice, except the stereocilia of the hair cells do not float freely in the fluid, nor do they directly transduce the sound waves in the fluid. The other video explains that much better. The rest of the Wikipedia video is good. I didn't read the whole Wiki article, but such articles are often a nice starting place.

If that is all too elementary for you, and you want a more in-depth treatment, I can send you the chapter on hearing from a neuroscience textbook.

Edit: @castleofargh 's link is much better than mine!!

Thank you, the video looks good since I need something a bit more visual to help me understand. As for the neuroscience textbook, I think I will need more time with these resources first

This should do nicely: https://umotion.univ-lemans.fr/medi...3-b720-3b49a64991e2/denorms_ts3_jambrosic.pdf
there is a lot of information about the mechanisms of hearing, some models of perception, the concept of masking, HRTF, etc. And at the same time it's not going so deep into each area that we need much knowledge to grasp what is being presented. It should at least give you some clues about what you're looking for specifically.

I'm going to be blunt about stuff made for audiophiles. They tend to be full of crap. The worst ones mix facts and marketing pseudoscience, so unless you already know the subject in depth, you end up thinking that everything is very convincing. They're very dangerous resources for beginners and I wish someone had kept me far away from them when I first came with my newbie questions a few years ago.

Thanks! These slides are much more numerous than what I thought. Looks like I will need some time with this

There is a some info from Monty in the link below under "Gentlemen, meet your ears" which has an 'audiophile' flavour.
https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

Thanks! It's also a good explanation on why 24/192 recordings are not worth the time and money to pursue

The Most Important Spec Sheet: The Human Ear
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/the-most-important-spec-sheet-the-human-ear.645851/

Thanks! I think I can and should checks those links out too

 

[darkarn]

Just to give a bit more context, one reason why I am looking into this now is that I am trying to schedule a proper audiologist appointment and need to know the correct words to explain what I think he/she should help look out for

So far it seems to me that I need him/her to check the outer ears first, specifically for ear wax and tinnitus issues. Along with canal shape and size as it seems to me that my left ear canal is strangely shaped/sized but I need proper confirmation from the audiologist for that

EDIT: This is especially important for me seeing how in 2015, I lost my left hearing due to what seems to be hardened blood blocking my ear canal that went away with a course of antibiotics from my school's GP.

Or so it seems seeing how over the years, I noticed that I got this weird persistant cough, "air leakage" from both ears (definitely not the right term for it, this is one reason I started this thread), seemingly being unable to catch dialogue etc

So far I went for only those free hearing tests and never thought much about this due to other more pressing and personal matters. But one day (somewhere end of 2019), when I got my IE80 and decided to start using it (along with my Custom ONE Pro), I started to return to the audiophile world and these observations started to be more apparent to me..

Now given that I have enough time and personal space to think through and read up about this, I thought that I should no longer delay this and get these doubts resolved and thus get this thread set up to help me at least get the right vocabulary to be able to communicate properly with the audiologist about them

 

[gregorio]

Just to give a bit more context, one reason why I am looking into this now is that I am trying to schedule a proper audiologist appointment and need to know the correct words to explain what I think he/she should help look out for

So far it seems to me that I need him/her to check the outer ears first, specifically for ear wax and tinnitus issues. Along with canal shape and size as it seems to me that my left ear canal is strangely shaped/sized but I need proper confirmation from the audiologist for that.

Oh dear, that's a rabbit hole, in fact a bunch of rabbit holes, because you're actually dealing with a number of different sciences; anatomy, acoustics, neuroscience, psychoacoustics and a bunch of others that define what you're actually listening to (the reproduction of audio recordings). While educating oneself is a good thing IMO, there's always the danger of "a little knowledge can be dangerous" and it's difficult to get more than a little knowledge when so many different sciences and facts are involved. There's always the chance of missing a fact that invalidates the other facts you know. For example some of the facts you may learn about human hearing are invalidated by the fact that when you're listening to a music recording, you're actually listening to an illusion of an illusion! Recording is an illusion, stereo is an illusion and music itself is based on illusion (expectation biases for example).

Another potential pertinent example is that what we hear isn't the sound that actually impacts our ear drums but a "perception" of the sound that hits our ear drums and that our perception is highly adaptable, given an acclimatisation period. This was demonstrated I believe by Floyd Toole (well worth reading his publications), with regard to sound engineers' perception acclimatising to studio acoustics and even overcoming/compensating for serious acoustic problems (comb-filter effects). Obviously you've had a lifetime to acclimatise to your different ear canals and in fact don't know anything else, as has everyone else because we all have somewhat different ear canals. Therefore, are you sure this is a real problem? Is your awareness that you have different shaped/sized ear canals biasing you perception? Do you just need to do what many others do (including myself), just fit your IEMs slightly differently in each ear?

To put this another way, let's say there was some surgical procedure that could give you identical ear canals. I'd hazard a guess that you'd have some serious problems for quite a while (until you re-acclimatised), even to the point of not being able to correctly identify/differentiate many sounds that were trivially easy before the surgery.

G

 

[darkarn]

Oh dear, that's a rabbit hole, in fact a bunch of rabbit holes, because you're actually dealing with a number of different sciences; anatomy, acoustics, neuroscience, psychoacoustics and a bunch of others that define what you're actually listening to (the reproduction of audio recordings). While educating oneself is a good thing IMO, there's always the danger of "a little knowledge can be dangerous" and it's difficult to get more than a little knowledge when so many different sciences and facts are involved. There's always the chance of missing a fact that invalidates the other facts you know. For example some of the facts you may learn about human hearing are invalidated by the fact that when you're listening to a music recording, you're actually listening to an illusion of an illusion! Recording is an illusion, stereo is an illusion and music itself is based on illusion (expectation biases for example).

Another potential pertinent example is that what we hear isn't the sound that actually impacts our ear drums but a "perception" of the sound that hits our ear drums and that our perception is highly adaptable, given an acclimatisation period. This was demonstrated I believe by Floyd Toole (well worth reading his publications), with regard to sound engineers' perception acclimatising to studio acoustics and even overcoming/compensating for serious acoustic problems (comb-filter effects). Obviously you've had a lifetime to acclimatise to your different ear canals and in fact don't know anything else, as has everyone else because we all have somewhat different ear canals. Therefore, are you sure this is a real problem? Is your awareness that you have different shaped/sized ear canals biasing you perception? Do you just need to do what many others do (including myself), just fit your IEMs slightly differently in each ear?

To put this another way, let's say there was some surgical procedure that could give you identical ear canals. I'd hazard a guess that you'd have some serious problems for quite a while (until you re-acclimatised), even to the point of not being able to correctly identify/differentiate many sounds that were trivially easy before the surgery.

G

Sorry, I missed out an important detail in my earlier post, I reproduced it in full here for reference

EDIT: This is especially important for me seeing how in 2015, I lost my left hearing due to what seems to be hardened blood blocking my ear canal that went away with a course of antibiotics from my school's GP.

Or so it seems seeing how over the years, I noticed that I got this weird persistant cough, "air leakage" from both ears (definitely not the right term for it, this is one reason I started this thread), seemingly being unable to catch dialogue etc

So far I went for only those free hearing tests and never thought much about this due to other more pressing and personal matters. But one day (somewhere end of 2019), when I got my IE80 and decided to start using it (along with my Custom ONE Pro), I started to return to the audiophile world and these observations started to be more apparent to me..

Now given that I have enough time and personal space to think through and read up about this, I thought that I should no longer delay this and get these doubts resolved and thus get this thread set up to help me at least get the right vocabulary to be able to communicate properly with the audiologist about them

Thanks, the problem is that due to that detail I do need a professional's viewpoint to confirm/disprove that my issues are real and to decide if I need earwax removal or simply adjust my IEMs e.t.c.

 

[bigshot]

Audiologists are focused on hearing speech. They aren't going to help you polish your hearing for music. They deal with hearing damage, not optimizing. I don't think you're going to be satisfied with what the audiologist tells you unless you have serious hearing damage that needs addressing. You should also be prepared to be told not to shove things that make loud sounds into your ear canal.

 

[darkarn]

Audiologists are focused on hearing speech. They aren't going to help you polish your hearing for music. They deal with hearing damage, not optimizing. I don't think you're going to be satisfied with what the audiologist tells you unless you have serious hearing damage that needs addressing. You should also be prepared to be told not to shove things that make loud sounds into your ear canal.

Thanks, I'll keep these in mind, still trying to see which professional are available e.t.c.

 

[gregorio]

Thanks, the problem is that due to that detail I do need a professional's viewpoint to confirm/disprove that my issues are real and to decide if I need earwax removal or simply adjust my IEMs e.t.c.

Your edit may or may not invalid what I posted. Getting a professional's viewpoint is certainly a good idea in your case, although as bigshot pointed out, an audiologist might not be the right professional. However, any decent audiologist will refer you to an ENT (Ear, Nose and Throat) specialist should they identify a need, and so an audiologist is not a bad place to start.

G

 

[darkarn]

Your edit may or may not invalid what I posted. Getting a professional's viewpoint is certainly a good idea in your case, although as bigshot pointed out, an audiologist might not be the right professional. However, any decent audiologist will refer you to an ENT (Ear, Nose and Throat) specialist should they identify a need, and so an audiologist is not a bad place to start.

G

Thank you! I am hoping for something like that actually, I will be speaking to my friend who works in a hospital and may know some of these specialists