Hear The Music

I just returned from a speaking engagement in Australia and learned quite a few things about down-under. Koalas are not bears; they are marsupials, so it’s wrong to call them Koala bears even though everyone I know, does. In certain, less populated areas it’s a smart idea to shake out your shoes before putting them on in the morning in

Kanye West was the main performer at the Pan American games that were just completed in Toronto, Canada. (Actually I think that they should be called the Pan Canadian games…). It was the most successful of games ever with the largest number of athletes of any previous Pan Am games. It was also a nightmare when it came to traffic.

An extra 4 decibels does not seem like a lot but it is when it comes to the new hearing aid microphones. Recently modern hearing aid microphones could only transduce up to 115 dB SPL (with 3-4% of distortion). Actually that had been the case since the late 1980s. However, the newest incarnation of microphones can transduce up to 119

Well, not “y” but it sounded better that way.  Y is actually a confusing letter with a long history of stupidity.  It was frequently interchanged with the old English consonant “eth” which looked like a backwards “p” but when the printing press came along, the top part of the “p” had a splotch of ink which destroyed the entire letter. 

Up until very recently, our collective amplified heads were submerged in a fog of front end distortion.  Sounds, including music and that of the voices of hard of hearing people who wear hearing aids, caused their own hearing aids to be overdriven even before the transmission reached the stage of the brilliantly designed software programming.  Even the best of algorithms

It wasn’t really panic, but I saw eyes full of shock.  It’s the type of shock that slowly comes on after knowing that something is not quite right, but we’re not sure what is wrong.  Suddenly it dawns … all of the senses become hyper-aware.  The lights suddenly go out and there is an ear piercing scream… There was a 30 dB notch

In last week’s part of this two-part blog series, the one benefit of having a long mold made for in-ear monitor impressions was discussed.   It had everything to do with minimizing the occlusion effect and absolutely nothing to do with ensuring that higher frequency sounds are properly transduced to the eardrum. In this week’s part, we discuss Dr. Robert Oliveira’s

On the acoustics advice from the world’s leading cat audiologist, Dr. Snicker’s McFeline, it became apparent that what is seen in the sound field, such as my living room, does not necessarily occur in the small occluded volume of an ear canal plugged with an earphone or in-ear monitor.  This was discussed in last week’s blog. Specifically, even though higher

I went to the vet for my regular check-up… actually it was for my two new kittens, Broccoli and Feather, not for me.  I still get the cats mixed up; they are both 4 months old, long haired female tabbies from the same litter, and to my untrained eye, look identical.  While sitting in the vet’s office, and while trying not

This past week, American Pharoah won the third leg of horse racing’s Triple Crown.  The last time that this was accomplished was 37 years ago, and the time before that was 41 years ago by Secretariat.  (Secretariat’s trainer was a Canadian, eh?)   The difficulty of the Triple Crown lies in the fact that the first two legs are shorter