I woke up early, excited for the day of the hearing test at a professional audiologist. A two-hour drive takes me to Stockholm on a sunny, beautiful summer day. Stockholm is such a beautiful city in the summer time, and I take this feeling I have as a good sign.
At Audionomkliniken Serafen, a health care center in the heart of Stockholm I meet the nurse that are going to do the hearing test. She place me on the chair in the soundproofed both and put the closed headphones on my head. She is very careful to make the test right, and I am being told to take of my earring out, since they can make sound leak out (or in). She gives me the instruction to press the button every time I hear a test tone. And she closes the door and the test are ready to begin.
I have been waiting for this test for so long, and are so inspired to finally do it to get some proper answers. So, when I hear the first test tone, I am fast to press the button. Yes, this is the easy part I think to myself, soon it will get more difficult.
I keep pressing the button and I think everything is working out just fine. After just a minute or so, the nurse opens the door to the booth. I think to myself, are we really ready now, we have just started the test?
The nurse looks at me and says; “You know, this isn’t a championship!”
I have no idea what she is talking about. Then she says: “You are pressing the button all the time, and I have barely started the test”
Oh… that is not the best start…
I explain to her that I am having difficult to hear when test note starts, so instead I press when I can hear a test tone stop. I also explain that some tones are so low in volume that I press when I have the slightest perception or sense of a tone.
Now I get to learn that that this is totally wrong approach to a hearing test. She tells me that I should press the button ONLY when I am totally sure that I am HEARING a test tone. Not when I have a vague perception or sense of that I hear a tone.
That was new to me. I have always tried to be such a good listener in these tests and have pressed when I had the slightest perception of a test tone.
When I write this, I understand how stupid this might sound to you. How could I misunderstand such a simple test? I guess the answer is that I believe that most people can hear these super quiet tones, and that I am trying to be as good as anyone else. Without realizing that I have missed the whole purpose of the test.
Ok, now I get the rules of the test better, and I am once again preparing for a new test. And this time I am going to nail only the test tones that I am sure that I can hear. Not just chasing the high score of pushing buttons.
The test takes a couple of minutes, and I think I do pretty well. This time the tones come in a more random order, and I am not able to predict what frequency the test tone are going to play in advance. That is a big difference from the initial test I did back at my local health center. That feels good.
After a couple of minutes of test tones, the nurse opens the door to the soundproofed both, and now she takes the headphones of my head. Then she puts a device on my head, that are going to make vibrations at the skull bone. As I understand it, this test will see if the inner-ear are working as it should. This method makes it possible to play sounds (vibrations) that are transmitted directly to my skull bone and not by the ear drum like acoustic sound wave does. Since this device is sending sound waves but is bypassing the ear drum, they are able to check if the problem with hearing is at the inner ear or the outer ear. That’s a really clever solution to detect where the hearing loss are.
Anyhow, the nurse closes the door once again, and starts the test with the transducer attached to my skull bone. I hear the test tones loud and clear, and it feels like this test went fine as well.
In my work with Sound Art, I have been experimenting quite a lot with audio transducer that transforms tabletops, windows and other surfaces in to a speaker. These transducers work like a speaker, but without the paper cone that set the air in vibration. Instead you place it on a surface like a tabletop, window or any other surface. Those become the speaker’s “cone” that makes the air vibrate, and that we can hear sound when it hits our ear drum. These kinds of transducers are also well known together with in-ear monitors on stage for drummers, where they place the transducer on the drum stool, so that the drummer can feel the vibrations of the bass. In this setup they used to be called “but kick”.
Anyhow, I have tried these transducers on different surfaces, and even put them on different parts of my body. I would strongly advise you to not try the following part that I will explain on yourself, since I suspect that it might not be healthy at all. It might even be dangerous, but to be honest I don’t know:
When you place the transducer on your skull bone there is a strange effect. If I put it on the right side of my skull, the sound will appear to come from the left. That is such a strange feeling, and I have always wondered why that is. (and no, don’t try this at home)
After the test is done, I get out of the soundproofed both, and finally it is time to have a look at the audiogram. It will be really interesting to see how close it is to the initial test I did at my local health center.
The Audiogram
The moment I get to see the audiogram it is not what I thought it would be like.
Actually, it is quite of a shock!
This Audiogram is not even close to the one that I did at my local health center. This is so much worse, that I am having a hard time to take it in. Since I am working with frequencies as a sound engineer, I can immediately understand in what condition my hearing are. And it is not a pretty result.
The hearing is fine in the low and mid frequencies, but it starts to drop as early as 2 Khz. At 4 Khz is a big dip, which is something I have had for a long time. But now, the dip is down at 55 dB which is far greater than it was before. At 6 Khz it is slightly better, but at 8 Khz it goes straight down to 65 dB.
What happens after 8 Khz, I have no idea about, since audiogram are only measured up to 8 Khz.
This is a devastating result!
The nurse has not explained any of my result at this point, she tells me that the doctor (Otologist) will do that in just a moment.
But I have seen the audiogram and I understand that this is bad.
Really, really bad.
I think to myself that for people in general, this might not be too bad, but for us that are tweaking sounds for our living – this is EXTREMELY bad. To have lost so much of the higher frequencies, might be the end of my career with music and sound, is what is spinning in my head. I am feeling a bit dizzy, and I really don’t know what to say to the nurse. At the same time, I am trying to keep my head up and act like a professional. Cause that’s the right thing to do, right?