[grumpyoldman]

Hi there,

I don't know if something like this has been posted, i found it quite amusing...
Equal loudness contours and audiometry - Test your own hearing
someone wrote a piece of software to send different frequencies out, you can use this on you combjuder in different ways, I guess. I normed it to 1kHz at -87db and than tested how low I could go detecting other frequencies, comparing different headphones, in this case SE110 against Se530 (seems unfair, should have compared 5 SE110 put together....) and here are the results: so lets see if the pics came down somehow, never done it before....

 

[grumpyoldman]

so that seems to have worked...
As you can see (hopefully) I am practically deaf above 12k, and not much better above 4k....of course you can say its the phones, but I compared my hearing years ago to my boy's and I was deaf than on high frequnezies, I am 10 years older now, so it would not have gone better....stop laughing, I am 44 and you will all get there, it is typical with age! I could not hear 16k at all, with both phones, but the SE530 were more sensitive at lows and highs, 9 to 14dB, that is quite substantial.....

next have a look what the speakers of my laptop (MacBook Pro) do, not for a comparison to the phones, but to allow myself to compare my hearing to a hearing in full bloom (sons's ears, he is too young to put iem in...)

What you can see is that young ears could hear the highest tones from the flat speakers, I could not ! There is one small problem, he did the test at home, I in a quiet place, his attention span was going towards the end (low frequencies) so these can not be trusted....I could not hear 30hz, 12 and 16kHz at all....

SO, what do I care about SE530 roll off in the high end? I would not hear a difference if it exploded in my ears! I blame this on a (female) boss who shouted a lot in unbearable high freq, so everybody around her must have shed all their "high" hearing "hairs" (survival instinct I guess). Having said this off course you can argue it becomes even more important to have good highs if you are halfway deaf.
This might be interesting to se if different insertions of your iem make a difference, no correction, you will hear this anyway, but this might tell you why easier?

Enyoj.....
How can I get pictures proper in a post?

 

[DanielCox]

I started this in the middle of the graph plus I'm using a tube amp (which I've measured to be louder in the high and low end). This is with my HD650s.

 

[iriverdude]

Good idea but you also need calibrated speakers/headphones. Those graphs are meaningless until you use phones audiologists use.

 

[grumpyoldman]

I can not agree that they are meaningless, you can use them to compare setups (headphones?) under your own conditions, now they are not "absolute" and everything has to be taken with a pinch of salt....I did it "wrong" anyway, I just started at 1khz, saw how low I could go and went from there to hear the lowest possible volume. I never read the manuals, or too late....

 

[iriverdude]

Not really you have two variables, your hearing and the headphones (plus amp path but ignore that for now, presume it's accurate and no EQ/tone controls) If you used a calibrated mic to calibrate your headphones, at least you know the response of the phones, so once you do a hearing test you can see if your hearing high end is dropping down. Say you just happen to have perfect hearing, it should be close to the calibrated of the phones response.

You wouldn't calibrate a TV with a light meter with unknown light response. Same for electrical meters, if they're 0.5v volt out then you could be adjusting electronics by +/- 0.5v

 

[leeperry]

too bad this test will go through KMixer, and aliasing will appear due to resampling...but I'll still try it, thanks for the link!

also, an otologist will play these tones very very low...playing them loud doesn't make sense?! I'll RTFM anyway..

 

[grumpyoldman]

Well, here we, go, just what I said, I can compare headphones...using the same amp, same (no) equalizer setting, same head (mine) same hearing...so If I can hear lower lows and higher highs, the headphone must be transmitting them better to my ear, right? I even had to adjust the output level (though not by as much as I though I would have to), so that the SE110 and SE530 produced a similar output at 1kHz. The 530 seem to produce a bit more sound at 750-500hz than the SE110, I presume this is why they sound so much louder than the 110. I also teste one ear only.....below there were several band where my left was more sensitive (3dB) as well as at 12KHz. And on good recordings the lady or the bloke allways seem to sit right behind me, offset towards the middle, about where the left shoulderblade is, so even that was somehow reflected by this cute little programme. So while it is surely not an engineers tool, it is interesting to toy around with.....or so I think....

 

[leeperry]

nice, but without a sonometer it's not too helpful....makes me wish I had an otologist console to check my hearing at home