A Young Stupid Person

Hello,

My name is Mortzcent. At the beginning I wanted to state that i don't have tinnitus (or it's not noticeable for me most of the time at all), but I decided to sign up here because it's only, relatively big community that discusses hearing loss and its possible treatments.

I am 18 years old and i can hear only up to 15 kHz which as an aspiring music producer and instrumentalist depresses me very often and is something i have hard time stopping thinking about. I also hear worse in my right ear. Just recently i lost 1khz (i could hear up to 16k) which made me even more desperate and made me look out for possible treatments in the future as well as taking steps towards ear protection.

I dream of a day when I can hear 20khz but i am not sure whether it'll ever come.

Thank you for taking your time reading this.

 

I don't want to sound like I am trivializing your problem, because I understand what it is like to have something that you cannot control gnawing away at you like this... But, I'm not sure why you are concerned. A 15 kHz upper hearing limit is a very normal and healthy range. I have normal hearing myself and my upper limit is somewhere in between 15 and 16 kHz, and I'm glad that it is not higher because I find frequencies up around that range to be rather unpleasant.

I think that you will be able to get along just fine with any music career that you decide to pursue. Take care to protect your ears and you should be hearing well for many, many years.

I guess, keep in mind that our perception of hearing frequencies is logarithmic. The difference between 15 kHz and 20 kHz is much less than one octave (as each octave represents a doubling of the frequency) — the difference of just a few keys on the piano (if pianos went up that high). Looking at the numbers on a linear scale makes it seem like you are missing one fourth of the sound that someone with 20 kHz hearing can hear, but on the logarithmic scale that hearing actually is, you aren't missing that much.

 

Be careful what you wish for. I have seen children out and around the neighborhood, most of whom still have hearing that reaches 20k, put their fingers in their ears and make faces when there are loud sounds such as elevated railway trains, which do not bother most older people who have long since lost the ability to hear as well as when they were kids.

 

Oh, I am completely aware of that it may sound like i am trivalizing but that doesnt stop my anxiety and depression in any way . Of course my hearing loss is nothing compared to some people here but it still concerns me. I just recently lost around 1khz in upper range and it was hit for me and it made me feel like my effort in keeping my hearing protected was worthless.

I agree with you on 16 khz thingy because typically normal track cuts off on that frequency but even then, i can lose more as i recently have.

I do know about octave distribution and that 10-20khz area is mostly about hats and brightness but even then i still feel endangered.

I know that veery high frequencies are mostly not utilised in music but i still would want to hear 20khz tone. If not 20k then 16k aka the typical mp3 compression cutoff.