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stabby ear syndrome


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Was wondering if the acoustic experts like Chris A. could spill the beans on every obvious trick you can do to tone down any harshness or ear pain and keep tinnitus from flaring up. The ones I am halfway aware of:

1. either stay more than 10' away from the back wall, or treat the crap out of it.

2. -3 db cut around I think 2,000 hz.

3. possible high frequency rolloff like the x-curve.

4. upgrade capacitors in your crossover. Or at least based on DeanG's writings.

5. don't point some horns like the RF-7ii right at your ears if you can keep from it.

6. make sure first reflection points on the side walls are treated

7. keep distortion to a minimum if possible

What else?

Edited by MetropolisLakeOutfitters
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DeanG crossovers tame the highs.

Unfortunately he announced that he was going to quit making them I believe. Can't remember details.

At this point if I watch anything louder than -20 my ears will ring and I lose the ability to hear details for 3-4 days. I've been like that for a long time, even had an ultra-quiet PC fan in a case under my desk mess with my ears. Very sensitive to very high frequencies.

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I ordered the Audessey pro kit hoping I can EQ it a little better. You can choose from the following target curves.  I'm under the impression or at least hopeful that the little dip about 2/3 of the way over helps quite a bit with this kind of stuff.  If not then I'm going to have to change out my fronts to use the big compression drivers like in KPT-904's.  Scrappy's is about the only thing I've heard that doesn't set me off.  

http://www.hometheatershack.com/gallery/file.php?n=6577

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Was wondering if the acoustic experts like Chris A. could spill the beans on every obvious trick you can do to tone down any harshness or ear pain and keep tinnitus from flaring up. The ones I am halfway aware of:

1. either stay more than 10' away from the back wall, or treat the crap out of it.

2. -3 db cut around I think 2,000 hz.

3. possible high frequency rolloff like the x-curve.

4. upgrade capacitors in your crossover. Or at least based on DeanG's writings.

5. don't point some horns like the RF-7ii right at your ears if you can keep from it.

6. make sure first reflection points on the side walls are treated

7. keep distortion to a minimum if possible

What else?

 

This is a pretty good list. My DAC is the biggest difference for me, if I am just running on my computer headphone out the compression makes my ears hurt and I have to stop but with my DAC i can listen all day.  (I do have a heavy curtain behind me in my office too to control reflections)

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Was wondering if the acoustic experts like Chris A. could spill the beans on every obvious trick you can do to tone down any harshness or ear pain and keep tinnitus from flaring up.

...

What else?

 

If the issue is stereo recordings, then unmastering them is the way to fix them.  See this for an example of this: https://community.klipsch.com/index.php?/topic/160786-new-chorus-ii-owner-with-some-questions-and-gripes/?p=1954987

 

The way to set the Spectrogram view within Audacity to see the colors properly is to set the Preferences:Spectrograms:Frequency gain (dB/dec) to 18, so that it will decrement the SPL required at each frequency for the color intensity to show the spectrogram colors as "equal loudness".  Then you can adjust the EQ across the stereo tracks such that it isn't arbitrarily boosted (by the mastering engineers used to the consumers using "house curves" to de-emphasize the highs in their loudspeakers, which, IMO, isn't the correct thing to do).  My approach is to fix the problem at its source, if possible.  Then you only have to fix it once.

 

The other way, like you alluded to above, is to have selectable presets on your loudspeaker "house curves" for stereo music tracks that you can select at listening time in order to attenuate the highs for each of your loudspeakers by the same amount - like a total of -2  or perhaps -3 dB total attenuation, from 20 Hz to 20 kHz.  More than that is usually a signal that you need to fix the music itself.

 

Movies are another issue.  I'd recommend a "house curve" approach, and make sure that the mute is on during the trailers, which is when most of the listeners' hearing abuse occurs.

 

The most likely frequencies that you need to attenuate are the frequencies from about 2 kHz to about 6 kHz.  These are the frequencies that the human ear are most sensitive to (the closed end tube of the ear canal magnifies these frequencies like a Helmholtz resonator) like that shown in the following Fletcher Munson equal loudness curves.

 

400px-Lindos4.svg.png

 

As far as room acoustic treatments - anything that can attenuate 2-6 kHz (...just about anything fuzzy will do...)  around the tweeters and any hard and flat surfaces that redirect those frequencies toward the listeners.  Usually, these frequencies aren't the ones that absorption panels are there for.  Putting absorptive material around the loudspeaker baffles--just around the tweeter's mouth--to remove secondary re-radiation point sources is usually the most effective way to cut down on room acoustics issues at these frequencies.

 

Using tweeters that have a broad coverage angle and clean output (i.e., more expensive tweeters) is also a way to cut down on tinnitus symptoms.  Bullet tweeters are the worst culprits for making things worse.

 

One other approach - if you have a "dynamic EQ" capability with your room EQ firmware in your AVP or AVR, then perhaps it will let you dynamically compress the frequencies around 2-6 kHz.  That will work for movies much more effectively.

 

Chris

Edited by Chris A
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As far as room acoustic treatments - anything that can attenuate 2-6 kHz (...just about anything fuzzy will do...)  around the tweeters and any hard and flat surfaces that redirect those frequencies toward the listeners.  Usually, these frequencies aren't the ones that absorption panels are there for.  Putting absorptive material around the loudspeaker baffles--just around the tweeter's mouth--to remove secondary re-radiation point sources is usually the most effective way to cut down on room acoustics issues at these frequencies.

 

 

How would you do this without looking ghetto on some RF-7ii's?  

 

This is for home theater.  Movies like Star Wars is messing with me the worst.  The rest of my family doesn't have these issues so I don't think the setup is completely jacked up.  

Edited by MetropolisLakeOutfitters
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Was wondering if the acoustic experts like Chris A. could spill the beans on every obvious trick you can do to tone down any harshness or ear pain and keep tinnitus from flaring up. The ones I am halfway aware of:

1. either stay more than 10' away from the back wall, or treat the crap out of it.

2. -3 db cut around I think 2,000 hz.

3. possible high frequency rolloff like the x-curve.

4. upgrade capacitors in your crossover. Or at least based on DeanG's writings.

5. don't point some horns like the RF-7ii right at your ears if you can keep from it.

6. make sure first reflection points on the side walls are treated

7. keep distortion to a minimum if possible

What else?

 

My money's on on more beer before, during and after every critical listening session. Not the low test, weak sister conventional American brewed 4 to 5% stuff but the good high-test stuff from Canada and plenty of it.  :)  :emotion-22:  :emotion-22:  :emotion-22:  :emotion-22:  :emotion-22:  :emotion-22:

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How would you do this without looking ghetto on some RF-7ii's?

 

My old AR90s (early 1980s) had a felt mat that encircled the front-baffle drivers.  Here's a picture of that loudspeaker type from a recent listing of another AR90 pair:

 

649235-teledyne_acoustic_research_ar90_s

 

Finding that kind of material that can be cut to the outline of the HF horn to the edge of the cabinet front face - this would minimize any additional re-radiation from the HF horn mouth (which will also help the imaging performance of the loudspeakers, too).

 

klipsch_RF-7-II_copy.jpg

 

Chris

Edited by Chris A
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Was wondering if the acoustic experts like Chris A. could spill the beans on every obvious trick you can do to tone down any harshness or ear pain and keep tinnitus from flaring up

 

The staby ear syndrome and tinnitus, you are referring to is a sign that something is wrong in the auditory system/nerve.  Dramatically decreasing exposure to loud noise is necessary.  This should be evaluated by an ENT doctor to make sure something more serious is not the cause.  Some jaw/mouth issues can also be a cause.  A lot of people will have tinnitus after a loud music concert but, that usually goes away and no further problems.

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I'll make a dumb suggestion; have you thought about getting a good set of ear plugs?  (I don't own these, I just found them on Amazon)

 

http://www.amazon.com/Acoustic-Filters-Advanced-Earplugs-White/dp/B00NW1IZ5Q/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1461041224&sr=1-2&keywords=ear+plugs

 

815StxYGjmL._SL1500_.jpg

More choices:

 

Occasionally I let my son blast my La Scalas to where I can't take it, but with some some ear plugs I can listen to his music and "feel" the beat, but it doesn't kill my ears.

 

Just a thought.

Edited by wvu80
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What does the otolaryngologist or the otoneurologist say?  I've heard that the mechanism of tinnitus is that your brain creates ringing and other noise because it expects (possibly because of your life experience) to hear high frequencies that some of your broken cilia in the cochlea can no longer detect.  In other words, it tries to "fill in" the missing highs, but doesn't do a very musical job.   I'm not absolutely certain that cutting the topmost highs will help.  Cutting back the frequencies between 2K & 6K, as Chris says, may be better.  Based on fooling around with graphic and parametric equalizers at SFSU about 20 years ago, my guess might be to try attenuating frequencies between about 1K and 4K.  Using Audyssey with a good parametric equalizer in the line after Audyssey might let you experiment until you find a solution. The "midrange compensation" that Audyssey Reference and the BBC Dip use cuts the frequencies centered around 2K.  An upper midrange dip might be the way to go -- that way the frequencies above about 6K would be left intact for the rest of your family or guests to enjoy. 

 

As you say, too much treble cut can just make the sound boring.

 

There is a over the counter drug called "Lipoflavinoid" (or something close to that) that supposedly helps tinnitus.

Edited by garyrc
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What does the otolaryngologist or the otoneurologist say?

I need to go back, last time I went I knew I had some rifle induced damage but we didn't specifically talk about this.

 

 

I've heard that the mechanism of tinnitus is that your brain creates ringing and other noise because it expects (possibly because of your life experience) to hear high frequencies that some of your broken cilia in the cochlea can no longer detect.  In other words, it tries to "fill in" the missing highs, but doesn't do a very musical job.

Yes it's kind of like an amplifier gain. When those frequencies aren't there it tries to turn the gain up so to speak.

What I'm worried about more than the tinnitus is the lack of being able to hear after watching a movie. If I watch Star Wars at -18 then I can't hear details for half a week, it's just like you felt after going to a rock concert with no ear plugs in.

 

Using Audyssey with a good parametric equalizer in the line after Audyssey might let you experiment until you find a solution.

Audyssey Pro lets you enter a custom frequency curve, I'm going to play with that for awhile. I'll be able to dip that upper midrange without killing everything else and see what that does.

Edited by MetropolisLakeOutfitters
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I really want to know the difference between RF-7ii's and KPT-904's, specifically with this issue in mind. Is it the DE-75's high end rolloff? The lack of copper woofers? Larger compression driver which equals less distortion? Some kind of horn resonance or artifacts? Scrappy's setup didn't set my ears off. I'm going to switch to those horns if I can't figure it out soon.

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