Hear The Music

Dec. 29, 2015

Star Wars and a return to the low-frequency side of the Force- part 1

Marshall Chasin
I just saw Star Wars and I will not give you my opinion of it, nor let the cat out of the bag about any plot details but it seems that this third generation of Star Wars now uses an 80 Hz rumble whenever the force is used. It’s always amazing how non-speech and non-music sound effects, or FX, can
Dec. 23, 2015

Best of Hear the Music: American Pharoah and Hearing Protection

Marshall Chasin
I am off on holidays this week, but hope you will enjoy this top post from Hear the Music in 2015.   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
Dec. 15, 2015

Touchable Music

Marshall Chasin
In a recent Reuters news release there was an item about touchable holograms.  This is actually quite neat and conjures up images of the holodeck on “Star Trek-The Next Generation”.  For the one or two people in the universe that don’t know about the holodeck, it’s a room (below, left) fitted out with holographic projectors and can create any number
Dec. 08, 2015

A New Reference Test Gain Standard for Hearing Aids and Music- Part 2

Marshall Chasin
  The reference test gain is a child of the ANSI S3.22 hearing aid standard (and the equivalent European IEC standard) and is that gain setting where many hearing aid tests are performed.  This includes measures of internal noise, distortion, and the frequency response of the hearing aid.   In part one of this blog series about the reference test
Dec. 01, 2015

A new reference test gain standard for music? Part 1

Marshall Chasin
Audiologists are quite aware of the ANSI standard S3.22 (and the equivalent IEC European standard) which specifies how to report whether a hearing aid works or doesn’t work.  This is not a performance standard that states that a hearing aid should work in a specific way; but just a reporting standard on how to perform each test and then make conclusions
Nov. 24, 2015

Musicians are not good listeners – or maybe it’s us?

Marshall Chasin
Hearing loss prevention is just that – hearing loss prevention. What can be done today to ensure that 30 years from now you will still be able to hear, at least relatively well? We can tell a musician that they should turn down the volume, but they won’t listen to us – they are just not good listeners.  Actually, it’s
Nov. 17, 2015

Sand Dunes are Tuned to E Below Middle C

Marshall Chasin
As clinical audiologists I am sure that we have all had similar training around the world.  Like most, and certainly in my program of study, we were dropped off in the nearest desert with a single bottle of water, a hat, and of course a series of geophones and radar equipment.  A geophone is a microphone that picks up vibrations
Nov. 10, 2015

AAMHL.org is now MusiciansWithHearingLoss.org

Marshall Chasin
The Association of Adult Musicians with Hearing Loss (www.AAMHL.org) has a new website … https://www.musicianswithhearingloss.org. I have written about this association in the past, but with this new website (and new name), I thought it would be time to remind everyone about some of the delightful volunteers associated with this group. It is almost a given that people with hearing loss
Nov. 03, 2015

Musicians’ earplugs have flat attenuation

Marshall Chasin
Mead Killion and Andy J. Haapapuro, in the November 2015 issue of Hearing Review have finally put to bed the controversy of whether Musicians’Earplugs have a flat or uniform attenuation. There have been some publications over the past several years that have questioned the flatness of commercially available musicians’ earplugs.  These publications have contained rather significant errors; some of which
Oct. 27, 2015

Does hearing continue to decline when away from noise?

Marshall Chasin
From time to time, certain articles come across my desk that make me sit up (typically spilling my coffee in the process) and reread it to make sure that what I thought I was reading, was indeed the case. Well, this happened to me about 15 years ago (and many times since, but I didn’t always spill my coffee). There