Marshall Chasin

Marshall Chasin, AuD, is an audiologist and the Director of Auditory Research at the Musicians’ Clinics of Canada, Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto (in Linguistics), Associate Professor in the School of Communication Disorders and Sciences at the Western University. He is the author of over 200 articles and 7 books including Musicians and the Prevention of Hearing Loss. Dr. Chasin has been the recipient of many awards over the years including the 2012 Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Award for service to Canada and the Canada 150 Medal in 2017. He has developed a new TTS app called Temporary Hearing Loss Test app.

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A vocalist wants a quiet space at home to practice

Marshall Chasin

I receive many questions from instrumental musicians, vocalists, and other performing artists about issues relating to how they should practice. A particularly common question is how can I modify a room in my house so that my vocal practice doesn’t drive my dog crazy. The adage, “some is good, too much is bad” comes to mind. Assuming that one has

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The Hidden Hearing Loss Controversy

Marshall Chasin

Hidden hearing loss, also known as “cochlear synaptopathy”, is a phrase used to refer to neural dysfunction where there is still good cochlear (or sensory) function. It is the sensory function that typically yields the measurement of hearing sensitivity on an audiogram or hearing test. People with normal cochlear function would have a normal audiogram but may report that they

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Shields, Screens, and Baffles

Marshall Chasin

This blog was originally published in Canadian Audiologist, Vol. 1, Issue 3, 2014 which is the official e-journal of the Canadian Academy of Audiology. We thank the publishers for permission to reprint. Sandra Teglas holds BM, MM, and PhD degrees from UNCGreensboro. At UNCGreensboro, Dr. Teglas was Program Coordinator with the Music Research Institute in the School of Music. She is

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My favorite post of all time

Marshall Chasin

The Mysterious Case of the Missing C# It was a dark and stormy Thursday when suddenly the telephone rang. I heard a voice that I didn’t recognize but something about it was familiar. He said that he had lost something that was very important to him and he had to see me right away. I gave him an appointment for

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Top Post of 2017 for Hear the Music

Marshall Chasin

Speech is not a broadband signal… but music is We tend to be biased, both in our training and in our technologies that we use. We tend to look at things based on spectra or frequencies. Phrases such as “bandwidth” and long term average speech spectrum show this bias. The long term average speech spectrum, with is averaged over time, is indeed

The Luxury of Hearing Protection

Marshall Chasin

This is a guest blog based on the theme, that some is good, but too much is not good. I have invited Pieter van ‘t Hof ([email protected]) who is the Manager of Research and Development of Dynamic Ear Company to contribute this week. Suppose you are on a cocktail party which has just started. Only a couple of people

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Aphasia and Music

Marshall Chasin

Aphasia is a word that is typically associated with a collection of symptoms that a person may experience after a blood clot or stroke has affected a certain part of the brain. In general, aphasia can be divided into two main groups; an expressive form that limits the output of speech, and a receptive form that limits the understanding of speech. Of

Why art existed in some caves but not others…

Marshall Chasin

For those who have ever been in a grotto or cave, on occasion, if you are very lucky, you may see paintings on the walls, or “rock art” made up of arranged stones; a miniature Stonehenge! This is a very rare event and the reasons for seeing art (or not) may be related to simple acoustics. Why is it that

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No correlation between cost of earphones and frequency response

Marshall Chasin

Of the many journals I subscribe to, one is the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. And of the articles that are the most well-read (at least so far in 2017) is “Enhancing monochromatic multipole emission by a subwavelength enclosure of degenerate Mie resonances” and “No correlation between headphone frequency response and retail price”. Well, I don’t have to

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Smartphones have latencies – part 2

Marshall Chasin

In part one of this blog series, the characteristics, strengths, and limitations of MEMS microphones were discussed. These are excellent microphones to use in devices that are “forgotten” in cars on hot summer’s days because electrons can be pumped back onto the microphone diaphragm when needed. However, issues such as dynamic range, frequency response, and “factory settings” such as directionality