Hear The Music

One of the larger embarrassments of the 1960s and 1970s, other than bell bottoms, was the systemic sexism in the broadcast industry. Using pseudoscience, women were told that they could not be broadcasters because the pitch of their voices was too high. Specifically, if the speaker’s fundamental frequency was high, as in a woman’s or child’s voice, then the harmonics were spaced

I have been a clinical audiologist for about 35 years now and I am surprised when I look back just a few years and find that what I told my clients either was wrong, or merely simplistic, based on today’s knowledge. Front line clinicians always find this in their first couple of years of work- we are still trying to

Custom hearing aids, whether they are in-the-ear, canal, CIC, or IIC, have acoustic pathways between the receiver and the end of the bore that are on the order of 10 mm (or less). This is also the case with occluding RIC style hearing aids. And this is also the case with in-ear monitors that musicians use. But let’s take a

This 4-part series of blogs overviews the phenomenon of masking and is written for the musician, not the audiologist.  The first three parts (upwards spread of masking, downwards spread of masking, and temporal masking) relate to the function and structure of the cochlea and associated neural structures, whereas this last part (phase) refers to the acoustics of any room.  Strictly

The following 4 part series of blogs, overviewing the phenomenon of masking, is written for the musician, and not the audiologist.  The first three parts (upwards spread of masking, downwards spread of masking, and temporal masking) relate to the function and structure of the cochlea and associated neural structures, whereas the last part (phase) refers to the acoustics of any

The following 4 part series of posts, overviewing the phenomenon of masking, is written for the musician, and not the audiologist.  The first three parts (upwards spread of masking, downwards spread of masking, and temporal masking) relate to the function and structure of the cochlea and associated neural structures, whereas the last part (phase) refers to the acoustics of any

The following 4 part series of blogs overviews the phenomenon of masking. It is written for the musician, and not the audiologist.  The first three parts (upwards spread of masking, downwards spread of masking, and temporal masking) relate to the function and structure of the cochlea and associated neural structures, whereas the last part (phase) refers to the acoustics of

In part one of this blog series, the drawbacks of dropping a piezo-electric microphone were discussed. While dropping a microphone looks cool, the crystal in these microphones were very brittle and dropping these microphones would mean that they were “ex-microphones” In more modern days, microphones tend to be either dynamic or capacitor.  And if you are over age 50, these capacitor

I recall sitting in a movie theatre and watching Michael Corleone drop the gun that he had just used to “off” some dirty cops in The Godfather.  It’s the first time that I saw this done. Since then there have been many runner-ups to that, with microphones and not guns:  JayZ at the Superbowl and President Obama during his last

Almost every week I hear about a move in the field back to the olden days.  A few weeks ago, I heard (on NPR) about a move back towards 8 track cassette players and indeed I still have one in my car.  Actually, that is true.  We were cleaning out my mother-in-law’s house and I came across a large 8