Hear The Music

How can I ensure that the music will not damage my ears? I get this question often, either on my blog, personal email, or from my musician clients whom I see clinically.  My answer is “If the music is less than 85 decibels you are not at risk, and even if you are in a musical environment above 85 decibels,

I have actually heard this expletive from several musicians over the years.   And if you think that it’s just from a Rocker, you are wrong, although, Rock musicians do tend to use more creative expletives than their classical colleagues.  The study of musician expletives would make an interesting Capstone study for an interested graduate student of audiology. What can be

What a good question!  I am actually asked this question often during a presentation I give, and it is usually raised after I talk about the unique requirements of string instrument players. My own clarinet and  a violin can generate rather similar looking spectra- they both have much of their energy in the lower frequency region and, like the long-term

In several previous blogs I wrote about a strategy where a musician, or a person listening to music, should simply remove their hearing aids.  Well – maybe I was wrong. Here is the story- at least up to now.  Most modern digital hearing aids are limited when it comes to being able to handle the louder inputs associated with music. 

“I’ve had analog hearing aids for years and my banjo sounded great.  They broke recently and I am now trying my fifth set of digital hearing aids.  They distort the sound of my music and nothing that the audiologist does seems to help.  I am not sure who is more frustrated- me or my audiologist!”   This is a common complaint

If you ever order in-ear monitors, or IEMs, you are immediately confronted with a major decision:  Do I choose a single-way (one loudspeaker) IEM like a hearing aid, or a 2-way system?  What about a 4- or 5-way system?  Current IEMs have up to five different outputs that can be configured to carry bass sounds (sometimes through more than one

Anyone who follows the Internet frenzies about any number of topics or reads blogs or even old-style paper newspapers could not help noticing that the past week has seen tons (tonnes in Canada) of coverage about an old topic that has been revisited.  Some of the coverage is valid and other aspects are silly. The valid part is that ALL

Several years ago I was asked to be an expert witness by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association who were contemplating an action against the local police services board regarding an upcoming G20 meeting in Toronto.  The police services board was considering using Long Range Acoustic Devices, or LRADs, as a crowd control device.  LRADs are loudspeaker systems on steroids and

On Friday Sept 13, 2013, Ray Dolby passed away.  With the passing of Dr. Bose several months ago, the year 2013 was not among the best for the audio industry. I met Ray Dolby at an Audio Engineering Conference (AES) in Los Angeles about 20 years ago and it was my least-cool life moment. After being introduced, I proceeded to

This is the fourth in a series of blogs about why audiologists are hesitant to see musicians or others in the performing arts.  The blogs are actually quite tongue in cheek but have some truth in them.  I routinely receive phone calls from musicians who have been referred to me for a “second opinion” when the issue is really that