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Well, this is interesting. I have a mild hearing loss at high frequencies, apparently. This was prompted by an NPR story about the “Mosquito” teen repeller, which plays a 17kHz tone to drive away unruly teens hanging around stores and other establishments. I had been able to hear the sample tone played on the radio, which was less than 17kHz, but we couldn’t hear it when I played the story on the computer. We figured it was just the computer having a hard time playing it, so we tried the Online Hearing Test at LloydHearingAid.com. I was the one clicking the buttons, so we were really only testing my hearing, and it came up with a mild hearing loss. It said my loss was greater at the lower frequencies (assuming I was interpreting the little chart right), but I figured that it only said it was a mild loss because they wanted to sell me hearing aids.
We still couldn’t figure out if my computer could play a 17kHz tone, though, so I searched around trying to find out how. I discovered that the Audacity software (which I downloaded to record Spoken Wikipedia articles) could generate its own tones, so we started playing with that. I was rather surprised to find that I couldn’t hear anything at 11kHz or above! A could hear up to about 15kHz. So now she knows why I sometimes don’t hear her when she’s calling for me from elsewhere in the house. I’m vaguely considering going for an actual audiologist test, even though I can hear human voices with no problem…just to find out what my actual loss might be, if any. I’m not actually worried…it was just a surprise to me to have A saying “yes, I hear that” for tones that I could swear weren’t even being played.
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Just a caution about the hearing test. You might want to be wary of the people who actually sell the devices. I was once on a jury relative to one of the companies that does that sort of thing, and it came out during testimony that while they didn’t lie, they stretched the truth a lot relative to the need for and effectiveness of their devices — and the older the prospective customer, the more they did it. Could be just those guys, that time, of course.
According to that test, I have normal hearing except in my left ear where I have trouble hearing higher frequencies apparently…(dont know if I am reading that thing right). Anyway, cool link.
I absolutely agree with you that they’re probably self-interested. They probably tell everyone they have a mild loss, so they can sell more hearing aids! The test itself is also entirely unscentific - I’d get a real audiologist’s test before buying any hearing aids. It’s probably true that many people DO have a mild hearing loss…but Lloyd’s definitely has a reason to say people do.