Have I been cursed to audio hell for the rest of my life?

[fanta]

Lately I started noticing that in speech, whether watching a DVD or a youtube video, people involuntarily whistle when talking. This mostly happens with a word that ends with the letter 's'.

The more I listen to any human talking now the more annoying and attentive to this I get, and the whistles/high frequency sounds can be really annoying and loud. Slowly, I'm noticing it in music now... just yesterday I was listening to 'set it off' by Audioslave and when the singer begins with 'set' it's not just 'set it off' like I listened to before, it's this annoying frequency beginning with 's' that I notice. It's like suddenly I was able to tune in to something my brain shut out, and now I can't tune it back out.

I'm curious if other people notice this and just ignore it, or don't hear it at all.

Also, any ideas on how can I deal with this? I'm not sure if this is a serious matter or my OCD is making it much more so, but I can't stop thinking/worrying about it.

 

[TSi]

dont listen to music for a week or so, same with videos and movies.

 

[boomana]

That's sibilance, and many people are more sensitive to it than others. It's mostly caused by the recording process, but some gear seems to bring it out. I couldn't stand DT880s or the Proline 2500 for that reason. Though I only spent a few minutes with the HFI 780s, I wasn't going to spend any more. What headphones are you using?

 

[Kees]

It is a well known an documented phenomenon called sibilance.

 

[subfocus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TSi /img/forum/go_quote.gif dont listen to music for a week or so, same with videos and movies.

X12 . Give yourself a (very) extended listening break.

 

[NajoBB]

The same thing happen to me too. I don't know your reason but mine was...good cans. Let me explain: before i listened at very high volumes because there was always something that was missing. A couple of months ago i bought my first expensive headphone and i was blown away by their sound. As time passed, i started to listen on lower and lower volume because it sounded just right at any volume. At one point, i've arrived at 80% volume of my ipod to be max that i can support ( European volume limited ipod - about 50-60% of uncapped/not volume limited ipod) and started to have some difficulties in real life such as disco, traffic, sibilance and any loud sound. I've adjusted my ears to low volume, and they started to hurt at high volume. I had a 2 weeks break from music
and then started to listen again, but this time on normal volume, sometime a little bit high and late in bed, low. No problem now.
Ps: just in any case, if you using some stimulants that can be a problem too, because they can make you concentrate too much in the music or some specific sound/frequencies, and i mean too much.....if not, forget about last phrase...just trying to help here

 

[fanta]

My headphones = a pair of HD650s but it's the same when I listen through my desk speakers, just some regular Logitech ones. I'll try quitting any music or movies/TV shows for a while and just read for entertainment, but I know that when I come back it might still be there so my brain will just be looking for it...

I was watching the Obama/Clinton debate yesterday on youtube and it was all over the place, just with my regular speakers. Especially with Obama... and I listened to him talk many times and have seen the previous debates without noticing any high frequency sounds like this. Other than Obama, Pauli from The Sopranos is bad with this too (I'm watching the DVDs now). It's not necessarily certain people but some are worse than others.

Oh well, if the break doesn't work maybe in the future I'll ask the super-awesome AI in my quantum computer to filter those frequencies out and that'll solve it...? LOL. Or maybe then I could program my brain not to notice it, sort of like hypnosis but with real neurology.... In the year 2040.

For the next few decades though I'll place my hopes on that break...

By the way, couldn't be that my hearing is just good at those frequencies? It can't be that it simply got better in the last ten days to hear this sound, but for the last couple of years I've been hearing a lot of high frequency sounds in videos and some music that annoyed me and found no solution to. Anything from DVDs to iTunes movies to an anime fansub, it randomly appears for a few seconds or sometimes longer and disappears.

A few weeks ago I got The Fountain OST by Clint Mansell and it's there really loudly on the first track, so bad it hurts my head/ears and I end up closing the song just a few seconds in. I tried encoding it with different bitrates and formats but nothing changed. Most songs on the OST don't have this problem though.

I don't know, maybe they're not related. The one I started this topic for is much worse and I hope it goes away soon.

 

[kain]

xanax, if not go to seroquel, your mind seems to be on overdrive with this

 

[Rednamalas1]

Listening to Celine Dion with Grado SR-325i will give you good example of sibilance.