[jthew]

Hi all! I am completely new to the headphone game. I've started because I want to do some more experimenting with correcting my high frequency hearing deficiency. I've read posts on this forum that indicate that power requirements are a function of headphone impedance and sensitivity, AND the amount of EQ applied. But I can't find where this is quantified.

So the budget is $500. Stuff can be new or used. I currently own HE-400i headphones, and have music stored on an iPhone SE and an iPod Classic 5.5 (supposedly the best DAC on an Apple product?). I want to be able to use a parametric equalizer that will allow me to have frequencies above 4k hz as much as 30dB above 20hz to 4k hz. It would be a plus to have 'bass and treble' knobs so that I wouldn't need a computer to make subtle changes.

Is this impossible on that budget? If not, please recommend an amp, parametric equalizer, DAC (if not using iPod), and associated cables.

 

[Dulalala]

+30 dB is a lot... You'll probably end up with a whole lot of clipping so no, I don't think it's possible to do that much EQ.

Either way, I'm really sorry about your hearing loss but if it is that bad you really shouldn't be forcing even louder music into your ears. You're just going deteriorate them even more.

 

[jthew]

I appreciate your response. But I should clear the air right at the beginning. Hearing aids do exactly what I am trying to do. That is, they program an eq curve that results in the deficient frequencies being boosted. We never hear folks say that hearing aids deteriorate one's hearing.

One more design criteria: I'm a quiet listener with speakers, and expect to be the same with headphones.

 

[Dulalala]

One more design criteria: I'm a quiet listener with speakers, and expect to be the same with headphones.

I apologize if I misunderstood, but from what I understood from your post was that you want anything above 4 kHz to be boosted by 30 dB. I was under the assumption you would be listening to the rest of the frequency at around 60-70 dB (safe listening level) and boosting it by 30 dB would make that 100 dB for those frequencies (which isn't safe).

Hearing aids do exactly what I am trying to do. That is, they program an eq curve that results in the deficient frequencies being boosted. We never hear folks say that hearing aids deteriorate one's hearing.

Actually improperly configured hearing aids will deteriorates hearing. If you boost it more than you should, you'll definitely damage your ears regardless. The hair follicles in your inner ear will get damaged depending on the SPL applied to it, not the perceive loudness. In general though, anything less than 80 dB total for no more than 8 hours is pretty safe.

 

[jthew]

I tried to get the 'hearing aids damage hearing' thing cleared up in another thread, but we can discuss more. The whole concept of hearing aids is to boost volumes above the norm. Sennheiser assistive headphones go as loud as 125 dB.

I have been tested on several occasions at different offices, and I have consistent high frequency deficiencies. I plan to boost by ⅔ of the deficiency at each frequency. (Actually, I'll be cutting frequencies where my hearing is normal.)

I'm 'all ears' on understanding how this differs from hearing aids.

When I tested with speakers, there definitely were places that were over boosted. That's because I was using a graphic equalizer, and didn't have a lot of control of contours. But, like anyone, I could hear that it was over boosted, and turned it down.

 

[Dulalala]

Sennheiser assistive headphones go as loud as 125 dB.

I don't disagree, they probably can go as loud as 125 dB, but that doesn't mean you should be listening to music at 125 dB.

http://www.hearnet.com/at_risk/risk_aboutloss.shtml

Most hearing aid have a special setting made for them. The analog ones usually have drivers that boost the mid range more than the rest, it isn't a flat out +30 dB to everything. Ill link the specification sheet for a driver used in hearing aids. On the second page you can see the frequency response of the driver.

http://www.knowles.com/eng/content/download/4690/64748/version/4/file/BK-21600-000.pdf

Then there are digital hearing aids, they use some sort of special EQ. From what I understand, it has a much more refined control? allowing for a response to tailor the ear more perfectly.

Now please don't misunderstand what I'm saying, I'm not saying hearing aids are damaging hearing, I'm saying excessively loud volume is damaging, even if you have hearing loss.

 

[Music Alchemist]

I want to be able to use a parametric equalizer that will allow me to have frequencies above 4k hz as much as 30dB above 20hz to 4k hz. It would be a plus to have 'bass and treble' knobs so that I wouldn't need a computer to make subtle changes.

Why not just use a free parametric equalizer on a computer? That would give you full control without any downsides. (With the right software and settings.)

Hardware EQ is very limited in what it can do and some of them can even add distortion and so on. I also don't know of any hardware equalizers that can do what you want.

+30 dB is a lot... You'll probably end up with a whole lot of clipping so no, I don't think it's possible to do that much EQ.

First rule of EQ: Reduce the gain in your player by at least the amount of your largest boost/cut to avoid distortion, then control the volume with an amp that has enough power to handle everything.

I know it's possible to do such extreme EQ with bass boosts, but I've never tried it with treble. Whether there are issues ultimately depends on the headphones. But it's definitely possible.

 

[Dulalala]

Why not just use a free parametric equalizer on a computer? That would give you full control without any downsides. (With the right software and settings.)

Hardware EQ is very limited in what it can do and some of them can even add distortion and so on. I also don't know of any hardware equalizers that can do what you want.



First rule of EQ: Reduce the gain in your player by at least the amount of your largest boost/cut to avoid distortion, then control the volume with an amp that has enough power to handle everything.

I know it's possible to do such extreme EQ with bass boosts, but I've never tried it with treble. Whether there are issues ultimately depends on the headphones. But it's definitely possible.

Well, I took the liberty of trying, and yeah it works (duh). No digital clipping or headphone clipping (at the loudest point I could withstand), which is great but I wouldn't want a high shelf +30 dB regardless.

 

[jthew]

I realize that I really don't understand how dBs work. So I started a new thread in the Sound Science form to keep my newbie clutter out of this thread: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/please-helpme-understand-something-about-dbs.866757/

 

[ProtegeManiac]

I want to be able to use a parametric equalizer that will allow me to have frequencies above 4k hz as much as 30dB above 20hz to 4k hz. It would be a plus to have 'bass and treble' knobs so that I wouldn't need a computer to make subtle changes.

Your main problem here is that most EQ apps (software) much less hardware don't go past +6dB. or +12dB.

I'm 'all ears' on understanding how this differs from hearing aids.

I appreciate your response. But I should clear the air right at the beginning. Hearing aids do exactly what I am trying to do. That is, they program an eq curve that results in the deficient frequencies being boosted. We never hear folks say that hearing aids deteriorate one's hearing.

And those are specifically designed to compensate for hearing deficiencies. Regular EQ is only used for:

1. Correcting system (ie, headphone/earphone, speaker in-room/cabin response, etc) imbalances, where +6dB varance from where 1000hz is is already very problematic, not for correcting severe hearing imabalances where +30dB will result in clipping of the amp and overexcursion on the drivers that requires components specifically engineered for that.

2. Beyond that, putting in 30dB boosts or not, sustained 100dB listening will damage your hearing, and if it's already damaged, it will damage it even further. Think of it this way - while in some cases breaking a hymen can result in bleeding, somebody who has already spent several days with the Japanese Army suddenly getting assigned one loser regiment to cool them off will still end up chafed and bleeding after a couple Companies, even with all the casualties.

 

[jthew]

Thanks for your response.

You mention that it may be difficult to find an equalizer, amp, and headphones to accomplish this. That is why I started the thread.

I know that sustained 100dB listening will damage normal hearing, and I appreciate you mentioning it. But:

1: On the other thread I mention in this thread, the response is that the big boost I want in the high frequencies will not result in 100dB if my baseline is 80dB. Is this wrong?

2: Headphones specifically designed for people who are hard of hearing are designed to play that loud. Over amplification is the solution for the hard of hearing. No, I don't want to put my mother's headphones on at her volume setting. But she has never been given a warning that using her amplified headphones or hearing aids will further damage her hearing.

I know this is a little outside the box.

 

[Dulalala]

Thanks for your response.

You mention that it may be difficult to find an equalizer, amp, and headphones to accomplish this. That is why I started the thread.

I know that sustained 100dB listening will damage normal hearing, and I appreciate you mentioning it. But:

1: On the other thread I mention in this thread, the response is that the big boost I want in the high frequencies will not result in 100dB if my baseline is 80dB. Is this wrong?

2: Headphones specifically designed for people who are hard of hearing are designed to play that loud. Over amplification is the solution for the hard of hearing. No, I don't want to put my mother's headphones on at her volume setting. But she has never been given a warning that using her amplified headphones or hearing aids will further damage her hearing.

I know this is a little outside the box.

1. If by baseline, you mean that you want everything below 4kHz to be 80 dB and everything above to be set to +30dB? I read the other thread, what this means

+25 dB at 4 kHz sounds crazy as the ear is very sensitive at that area. Should sound pretty piercing! The measured dB depends on the spectrum of the music (and it changes in time). Maybe you'd get something like 90 dB in average? Impossible to give exact estimates.

And @71 dB , correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe he's saying that the average dB in a song could be around 90 dB, accounting for the variety of frequency played at different SPL.

Another thing, you mentioned +25 dB in the other post. +5 dB difference may not sound like a lot, but +10 means double in perceived loudness (on averaged) and +3 means double the SPL. Sound is logarithmic so that +5 dB isn't a small difference.

If you had a constant tone, lets say white noise as an example, and you add +30 dB or even +25 dB to everything above 4kHz while it's playing at 80dB already, the average is definitely going to be more than 100 dB.

2. Literally the first thing I found on Google...

"Under the majority of circumstances, the answer is no. Programming the hearing aids properly is critical, as hearing loss is often caused by prolonged exposure to loud noises (above 80 decibels is typically considered the threshold). If your hearing aids are programmed to make noises too loud, this can be problematic as they may get louder than necessary and cause damage. However, if hearing aids are programmed correctly, fit well, and filter sounds properly, then they should not damage your hearing."

No audiologist is going to tell you, "Oh I'm going to purposefully make a mistake in my design of your hearing aid so that your hearing will get worse."

As I said before, I did not claim hearing aids causes hearing loss. I said improperly configured hearing aids that are too loud can cause/worsen hearing loss.

 

[Music Alchemist]

You mention that it may be difficult to find an equalizer, amp, and headphones to accomplish this.

There are plenty of free parametric equalizer programs that can do boosts/cuts of more than 30 dB. There are also plenty of headphones that can handle what you need.

You just need to make sure you use an amp that can handle it all too, because you need to reduce the gain in your player by at least the amount of your largest boost/cut to prevent clipping/distortion, so that means you're going to be using higher volume settings on the amp than normal.

As others have warned, you need to make sure you do things right. The specifics are up to you.

Also, for potentially higher quality, you can reduce the lower frequencies by the amount you want instead of directly boosting the upper frequencies by that amount.

 

[jthew]

1. If by baseline, you mean that you want everything below 4kHz to be 80 dB and everything above to be set to +30dB? I read the other thread, what this means



And @71 dB , correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe he's saying that the average dB in a song could be around 90 dB, accounting for the variety of frequency played at different SPL.

Another thing, you mentioned +25 dB in the other post. +5 dB difference may not sound like a lot, but +10 means double in perceived loudness (on averaged) and +3 means double the SPL. Sound is logarithmic so that +5 dB isn't a small difference.

If you had a constant tone, lets say white noise as an example, and you add +30 dB or even +25 dB to everything above 4kHz while it's playing at 80dB already, the average is definitely going to be more than 100 dB.

2. Literally the first thing I found on Google...


No audiologist is going to tell you, "Oh I'm going to purposefully make a mistake in my design of your hearing aid so that your hearing will get worse."

As I said before, I did not claim hearing aids causes hearing loss. I said improperly configured hearing aids that are too loud can cause/worsen hearing loss.

Thanks for sticking with me folks. Sorry about that, but the target would be +25 dB. So, an oversimplified model would be flat to 2k, straight line ramp up to +25dB at 4k, +25 from 4k to 10k, and 0 output from 10k on up.

By 80dB baseline, I'm trying to convey that I would want vocals, bass, mid bass to sound that loud to me. My hearing is fine at those frequencies. So, take a piece of music, and set the volume so that it measures 80dB. If I kept that 'loudness' for everything below 2k, and had the highs relatively boosted, my tests show that I will be able to hear as when I was younger.

I have one other estimate that the measured volume would be <90dB. So, over 100dB is quite a difference.

HE-400i's just came in last night. Plugged directly into iPod Classic 5.5, I have the volume at just under 50%.

 

[Dulalala]

Thanks for sticking with me folks. Sorry about that, but the target would be +25 dB. So, an oversimplified model would be flat to 2k, straight line ramp up to +25dB at 4k, +25 from 4k to 10k, and 0 output from 10k on up.

By 80dB baseline, I'm trying to convey that I would want vocals, bass, mid bass to sound that loud to me. My hearing is fine at those frequencies. So, take a piece of music, and set the volume so that it measures 80dB. If I kept that 'loudness' for everything below 2k, and had the highs relatively boosted, my tests show that I will be able to hear as when I was younger.

I have one other estimate that the measured volume would be <90dB. So, over 100dB is quite a difference.

HE-400i's just came in last night. Plugged directly into iPod Classic 5.5, I have the volume at just under 50%.

My over 100 dB estimate is if all frequencies have the same amplitude, which is obviously not the case in music, it was an example. The ~90 dB sounds about right for most music. Regardless, as I said above, anything above 80 dB for a long period of time is already dangerous.
Personally though, if you ask me, I think going to see a specialist is probably the safest bet. I wouldn't want to DIY something that could possible cause damage to my hearing as there are probably other variables I'm not accounting for and because if I make a mistake, I can't reverse it.