Frequency hearing drop Options

[eahm]

"Hello doctors/experts,"

I read that the ability to hear high frequency sounds drops with time and age and I am aware that we have a range and I also saw graphs and documents about it.

My concern is about how the drop appears, does it change from where one lives? How much and how fast can the time/age drop? Does it depend to humidity? Weather (too cold, too warm)? Altitude? Bad habits (alcohol/beer, whisky etc., smoking/cigars etc.)? Most important, fatigue/not to much sleep (and probably still related to the weather being too warm)?

I am 30, can it be temporary and go back up during winter?

It's not a matter of life and death, I actually don't really care, the music is still good to me and if age does this it's ok but I was able to hear up to 17Khz let's say 5-6 months ago and now only up to 13Khz. Here in Phoenix 5-6 months ago was cooler than this very hot summer that's why I'm asking about the weather possibility. I've been in Arizona 6 years but I am not from here, I am from a small mountain town from the center-north of Italy, I have no idea what the desert can do to a person.

If anyone can answer, thanks.

This post has been edited by eahm: Sep 11 2012, 03:06

[slks]

I have heard of loud noise from driving causing hearing loss - people who ride motorcycles, or convertibles, or even normal cars with the windows down at highway speed. My car is particularly bad in that regard. And it seems like the wind noise at 60+ MPH is especially loud at very low sub-bass frequencies which might be perceived as not very loud, when in fact there's a high sound pressure there. (Veering off into speculation now...)

I don't know that some iPhone app could be trusted with giving an accurate measurement of SPL. Even if you were to get an "offset" value from someone with an actual calibrated instrument, there's still a dozen different ways the value could be skewed between different phones. Different hardware revisions of phones that are designated the same "model", different firmware, perhaps OS or software settings (I have no idea how iOS handles this internally).

But certainly ear infections or wax buildup can cause a muffling of the ear. It could be worth looking into if you think your hearing is deteriorating.

Also - is the method you're using to test your hearing now, exactly identical to how you tested it earlier? I mean perfect. Same software used for testing. Same hardware. Same speakers/headphones. Exactly identical speaker placement and orientation. Even your head in exactly the same position (if you're using speakers). High frequencies are more directional than lower ones, especially with certain types of tweeters. So placement/orientation are very important for this test. Ideally you'd use headphones (with a known frequency response) so that the orientation of your ears to the drivers doesn't change.

If you're doing this via computer and not specialized hearing-testing hardware, that opens up an even bigger can of worms. In Windows there are typically multiple sliders used to control output volume. Other options that are non-obvious ("sound enhancement" etc) can possibly come into play. Even updating your sound drivers could potentially change things. If your volume level's changed for any reason over the months, it might not be valid to compare the two tests.

This post has been edited by slks: Sep 12 2012, 08:43