Joe Beets
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- May 27, 2008
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There are millions of middle aged music lovers who regularly attended live performances back in the 60's and 70's where the volumes were incredibly loud. You may have seen photos of the old concert stages covered with stacks of speaker cabinets. Nowadays that sort of thing is just for show. But in the early years they were actually used. Even in the small local clubs, the bands usually had a wall of amplifiers behind them. Audiences were deafened and, of course, it was even more damaging for the musicians on stage. I played professionally during those years and endured those sound levels six nights a week with no ear protection. Most of the guys I performed with didn't use plugs either. So what happened? My high frequency hearing is seriously shot. I can barely hear the top six notes on an 88 key piano. Mainly just the mechanical sound of the hammer striking the strings. I'll bet there are millions of other old timers out there who's hearing is shot as well.
When I listen to recorded music it is always extremely bottom heavy. Always too much bass, and on rock music especially, that damn incessant pounding bass drum. I've tried a few make-do solutions to cut down the bass. Harrison inline high-pass filters on the CD output worked, but they aren't easily adjusted while you are listening. Then I built a couple of cheap hobbykit tone adjustment modules but they were noisy and had scratchy pots. Both of them eventually made a loud popping noise and went dead. When the last one blew it fried out one channel of the CD player it was hooked to. Next I tried a Behringer PA mixer. The EQ section allowed me to cut the bass, but it seemed stupid to have eight channels and dozens of controls to perform such a simple function. And the sound was sort of.....well...stifled. I just ordered a Gemini PA-7000 with a three band EQ and I'll give that a try. If that doesn't work, maybe I can find a stereo graphic equalizer with enough boost to drive a set of headphones.
So what am I getting at? Wouldn't it be great if just one of the dozens of headphone amp makers could put out a model with tone controls. Or at least a 6db 80hz switchable filter. And maybe even a balance control. Something like this would be a smash hit with the hearing challenged. If only I could come across a Xenos HA3 at a garage sale.
When I listen to recorded music it is always extremely bottom heavy. Always too much bass, and on rock music especially, that damn incessant pounding bass drum. I've tried a few make-do solutions to cut down the bass. Harrison inline high-pass filters on the CD output worked, but they aren't easily adjusted while you are listening. Then I built a couple of cheap hobbykit tone adjustment modules but they were noisy and had scratchy pots. Both of them eventually made a loud popping noise and went dead. When the last one blew it fried out one channel of the CD player it was hooked to. Next I tried a Behringer PA mixer. The EQ section allowed me to cut the bass, but it seemed stupid to have eight channels and dozens of controls to perform such a simple function. And the sound was sort of.....well...stifled. I just ordered a Gemini PA-7000 with a three band EQ and I'll give that a try. If that doesn't work, maybe I can find a stereo graphic equalizer with enough boost to drive a set of headphones.
So what am I getting at? Wouldn't it be great if just one of the dozens of headphone amp makers could put out a model with tone controls. Or at least a 6db 80hz switchable filter. And maybe even a balance control. Something like this would be a smash hit with the hearing challenged. If only I could come across a Xenos HA3 at a garage sale.
