Listening to Classical Music with High End Hearing Loss

I can’t hear much above 4 KHz anymore. But I’m still enjoying classical music as much as can I remember in the past.

Except for the piccolo that can go up to 5 KHz, I can hear the full range of fundamental notes from all the other instruments pretty well. I’m probably missing some of the lower order harmonics from things like violins and the piano, although that doesn’t seem to be really very noticeable to me.

And since a lot of the music still resides below 2 KHz I don’t think I’m missing very much at all.

So, it leads to the question of whether single driver full range speakers would be even better than the current 2-way Piccolos that I have. That would get rid of the crossovers completely, although I not sure of just how much benefit it would bring.

I know there a lot of full range fans here, so I’m looking for anyone with similar experience that may have traded a quality sounding 2-way for a full range to play classical music and heard any appreciable difference or improvement.
 
  • Like
Reactions: oscroft and Drbulj
I would make an experiment: substitute the tweeter of your speakers with a 109 dB compression driver, use an L-pad to dose the quantity.
This brings to the ideal speaker, which has to be three ways because of this.
Woofer+ fullrange is incomplete.
Of course you can do whatever you want with speakers...
 
  • Like
Reactions: Audio>X
Como sordo confirmo
Sin duda, las bocinas son la mejor manera de escuchar música clásica. Yo utilizo un sistema Dirac para afinar la sala y un TAD4001 con bocinas de corte de 300 y el crossover. Probé muchas opciones.
With several slopes, finally 600Hz 12dB per octave show the best 3D image, obviously the curve I use is exclusively for my lost hearing
 
May I suggest a hearing test? If you use a good Android smartphone it may have one built-in for equalizing headphones, but you can toe-in your speakers to point (tweeters) at your ears too. Lately I'm noticing weaker sine wave 12-12.5khz than before, oh well. Above that I hear crushed paper noise. Nevertheless, last year when I notch-filtered the Mark Audio Alpair 10.3 by ear before consulting the published chart (as a challenge and a test of my diy method), I nailed its 7-14khz plateau dead-center, implying up to 14khz was heard as over-brightness. In your situation, you likely heard the crucial 5khz dynamics and 7-10khz instrument tonality effects without knowing it.

I can't answer your question about switching because other than my long-time reference Monitor Audio Studio series I switched right out of school -- first ESL63 then fullrange. And the Moes (first-order XO all AlMg) were more like single-cone speakers than just about anything even whizzer-cup fullrange. But unless your Piccolo offset the tweeter for acoustic-center alignment, any decent fullrange should image more effortlessly, and sound more dynamic.
 
May I suggest a hearing test
can’t hear much above 4 KHz anymore
May I suggest the use of heavy DSP + lots of EQ and massive horns.
Instead,heavy DSP + lots of EQ and micro horns + classD amp... all together in a hearing aid capsule.
I guess that attending to a concert of classical music with sound reinforcement ( it happens for real) and wearing a hearing aid would have a certain imprint
 
  • Like
Reactions: Audio>X
I would make an experiment: substitute the tweeter of your speakers with a 109 dB compression driver, use an L-pad to dose the quantity.
This brings to the ideal speaker, which has to be three ways because of this.
Woofer+ fullrange is incomplete.
Of course you can do whatever you want with speakers...
Interesting idea that I haven't thought of. If I understand this correctly you are suggesting a compression driver to produce higher output at the upper end that could possibly compensate for my hearing loss in that range.

So, if I were to plot the frequency response curve for the system it would climb significantly at the upper end above about 5 KHz, which a conventional system like my current one does not do.

Is that my correct understanding?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Audio>X
May I suggest the use of heavy DSP + lots of EQ and massive horns.
Instead,heavy DSP + lots of EQ and micro horns + classD amp... all together in a hearing aid capsule.
I guess that attending to a concert of classical music with sound reinforcement ( it happens for real) and wearing a hearing aid would have a certain imprint
Yeah, thanks. I not quite ready to go the hearing aid route, yet.

My one concern with the boosted high end approach using horns, etc., at higher volumes is the very loud sound that would now get into the rest of house. I think that's going to be too disturbing to my wife to go this route.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Audio>X
I can’t hear much above 4 KHz anymore. But I’m still enjoying classical music as much as can I remember in the past.

Except for the piccolo that can go up to 5 KHz, I can hear the full range of fundamental notes from all the other instruments pretty well. I’m probably missing some of the lower order harmonics from things like violins and the piano, although that doesn’t seem to be really very noticeable to me.

And since a lot of the music still resides below 2 KHz I don’t think I’m missing very much at all.

So, it leads to the question of whether single driver full range speakers would be even better than the current 2-way Piccolos that I have. That would get rid of the crossovers completely, although I not sure of just how much benefit it would bring.

I know there a lot of full range fans here, so I’m looking for anyone with similar experience that may have traded a quality sounding 2-way for a full range to play classical music and heard any appreciable difference or improvement.
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/beetlejuice-speakers.409269/post-7643454
😂😂😂
 
I used a CD with 0.75 aperture of the throat in a little 8cm ROUND horn ( similar to those already assembled by some manufacturers, in the 50 $ range...example: https://www.toutlehautparleur.com/h...-aigu-avec-pavillon-18-sound-xd110-8-ohm.html ) together with a 15 Ω L-pad. At the very first segment I played, so 14ΩS-1ΩP, a little touch was just too much, but over-exagerating don't bring much more distortion, just louder.
 
Definitely getting most of it: https://alexiy.nl/eq/ .........so based on the mean of 50 - 8 kHz = sqrt(50*8000) = ~632.45 Hz = ~13543/pi/632.45 = 6.81" dia. = the pioneer's default 8".

For 2 way, XO at ~632.45 Hz, then the HF = ~sqrt(632.45*8000) = 2249 Hz = ~13543/pi/2249 = 1.92" = 3 - 3.5"? No clue what's available this small other than the cheap tweeter horns I used.
 
Last edited:
I used to use Diatone and Yamaha's 3-way, but switched to full range after listening to MarkAudio.
I recommend the MAOP10, which produces ultra-low sound (under 50Hz) like 18-inch speakers and has sufficient treble, so there is no need for DSP, EQ, and subwoofer.
I also think the appeal of full range is the spatial expression that cannot be achieved with a multi-way system.

 
Fullrange seems a good idea. I may go that route myself one day. There is some merit in trying to put the HF back though. Perhaps an experiment with headphones and a graphic equaliser could be interesting. Not an actual hardware purchase though, I think you can download a graphic program for your PC. Then play some sweeps from youtube, and see if you can put the HF back. It's possible you won't like doing so though. Screaming something at your ears that they no longer like doing, may get a poor result. I'm guessing they just don't move like that anymore.
Getting rid of crossover distortion might be nice. I wonder if you have a shop that could demo such a thing. There are a lot of followers, of people like fostex