Can You Hear This?

Ace of Spades (a great blog and a Fordham grad) posted this about hearing in teenagers. We are born with the ability to hear from 20 hz to 20K hz (a speaker salesman once boasted that his speaker could produce sound form 20 hz to light!) but sadly, IPODS, rock shows, car boom machines, and the military-industrial complex have all conspired to rob us of our hearing.

Historical note: As a recording engineer in the 80's, I tutored under the great Eddie Kramer who produced no less than Jimi Hendrix, Led Zepplin, Procul Harum and KISS.  Mr. Kramer, a savvy little South African who twirled knobs on a Pultec EQP-1A faster than an Eddie Van Halen solo...and with as much swagger, taught me the ropes as we worked on a record for the Simms Brothers Band at the now-defunct North Lake Sound in White Plains, NY. Among my many jobs was to position microphones out in the studio as he could get the best sound. As I was moving the Shure 57 around the Marshall cabinet (not a quiet amp) he said, and this is a quote, "Put your ear right into the speaker so you can find the true source."  But that was not as bad as the night in the Fillmore East when the Who debuted "Tommy". They were SO loud that I had stuffed tissue in both ears and it still felt like nails in my eardrums. Oh, and don't forget the Ramones. I mixed sound for them live at the Detroit Club in Port Chester in 1980. It was so loud that my wife, Dale, who was pregnant with our son, Casey, had to leave because "the baby is kicking and freaking out!"

CC and EK at North Lake Sound, circa 1981

For some reason I escaped serious ear damage. AND I can hear that 15khz tone. They say that malls use the 18khz frequency as a deterrent for loitering teenagers. I remember Macy's in White Plains had a burglar alarm that so annoyed me in the 60's, when I shopped there with Mom, I took a complete detour around the section (jewelry) where it was screeching.

So try your ears on the teenager audio test. Really, it is a test of your speakers as well. True audio testing takes place in a controlled environment, no light, in an anechoic chamber and with a series of ever-increasingly higher tones to test where you lose it.