Could it really be hearing loss?
After working with music and sound for more than 30 years, i knew that my hearing was’nt perfect. I knew that I had a dip around 4 Khz, and some tinnitus (don’t we all?), but otherwise my previous hearing tests showed that my hearing was over all good for my age, which at this point is 50.
During this summer of 2021, when I noticed that my tinnitus and hyperacusis raised, I still had not noticed and difference with my hearing, frequency wise. Since I am working with mixing music every day, both in studio and live, I constantly work with tweaking EQ frequencies, so I am extremely familiar with listening and analyzing frequencies. I belive if there would be some change in the frequency response in my hearing, I would notice that right away.
That was what I thought.
During this summer my mixing jobs continued without any problems, but i started to notice a couple of things in my everyday life.
I had started to work with mixing sound for streaming and live-concerts in local churches, which I had never done before. I just loved that for me new working environment, and the clients that also where the people I worked close together with. Everybody in the churches where such beautiful and caring people, and I really like (and respect) the vibe of churches. It is something truly magic in these historic gigantic rooms.
But i noticed that some of the people in the staff, where just talking so soft and where just mumbling. I heard mostly the vowels of what they said, and I thought it was a combination of they not able to speak out loud and clear enough, in combination with the reverberant room that Scandinavian churches have, that are often made of stone and have a huge space with a super long reverberation.
In the beginning I did not realize, that it was not these people that where speaking soft and mumbling. In fact, it was a sign that I was starting to lose more and more of the high frequencies in my hearing – which makes it difficult to hear consonants. When you can’t hear consonants that well, it sounds like the person in front of you are mumbling, and you hear mostly vowels and mumble.
The result was that when some of the people in the staff where talking to me, to give me instructions or something work related, I had to reply “what?” to make them repeat what they said. When I still did not hear their reply, I would ask them to repeat again. When I still did not hear what they were saying, I just felt bad and could just not ask them to repeat for a third time. Because, what would they think of me? They might think that they had hired a sound engineer with degraded hearing. Which they had.
Instead I just nodded my head and said “mmmm” (neither yes or no) and crossed my fingers that what they just have said, not was of great importance. Most of the times it seemed like that was the “correct” answer and the work continued as usual. And they did not look through my lie. But at other times, they were expecting an answer back from me. And I had not heard the question at all.
That is when a really awkward moment appears, and i had to ask them to repeat the question for a third time. That is when you really look like a dumb ass that doesn’t listen or take your client serious. Luckily enough for me, these clients where the kindest people that did not show any irritation at all. Other clients would not have been that forgiving…
Another insight was when me and my wife on a beautiful summer day, had a walk in the nature. She said to me – wow, listen to all the beautiful crickets, aren’t they amazing?
I answered something like a mumbling “mmmm” trying not to lie to much. I did not want to tell her that I could barely hear the crickets, to make this beautiful moment in to something awkward. And I did not want to say yes, which would be somewhat a lie. But to be honest, at that moment I started to realize that my hearing probably was in worse condition that I could imagine, and that i probably never would truly hear crickets again for the rest of my life.
That is a truly sad experience – when you realize that you are missing out sounds in the nature which usually have been something of great value for me. What is probably more sad, is probably the fact that I did not have the guts to tell my wife about it, and let her know my experience.
I have no problem at all showing my most vulnerable sides for my wife in normal situations. She is the most caring person I know, and she is supporting me in every situation of life. Why I did not have the guts to tell her about my problem hearing the crickets was more about that I tried to hide this lie for myself. I did not want to face that my hearing where starting to degrade, so I just looked the other way around, and tried to change subject in the conversation. I was probable so afraid to what my life with music would be that day my ears not would be these super-instruments any longer, that they had been so far in my music career.
The situation above may seem like I have a severe damage hearing problem, that absolutely would make it impossible for me to continue as a professional sound engineer. Well, that is not the case. At least not at this point in my life. There is such a fine line when you have a perfectly normal hearing, and when you are starting to have problems in your everyday life.
For me, I have a fading frequency curve, starting slightly at 2 Khz, and goes more drastic at 4 Khz and above. My experience so far is that I am still able to do great mixes, both in the studio and live, as long as I am aware of what I am missing. The problems with this kind of frequency loss, is rather to hear consonants, especially in acoustic difficult environments. And to hear crickets.
At this point I could not lie to myself anymore. My tinnitus and hyperacusis had got worse really fast as a post-covid condition, I could not hear crickets like I used to do, and I realized that I was having trouble following conversations in some situations. I really needed to check my hearing and get to know exactly what is happening here – and what I can do about it. So I booked an appointment with my doctor.