Post Your Headset Settings!

So, I have partial hearing loss myself, and I decided to tweak my settings on my new headset to Surround, which got me a pseudo-normal hearing sound (by that, I mean, music and voices come equally on both sides).



Confused? Let me explain.

The Vol 11 on the right is where my bad ear is. I can use the Volume Slider from Windows to lower and increase the volume without touching those settings above. So no, I'm not blasting super loud sound, lmao. I actually hate too much noise, mind you.

The Vol 8 is for my good ear. Obviously if I set it to Vol 11, it would sound louder on that ear, so I had to lower the volume on that a bit to achieve balance.

Could maybe lower it to 7-6 maybe, but 8 seems fine for me and I can hear normally once again!

This is with 16 bits, 44100 Hz format (not sure if someone would know about this, but if there's any audiophile, who happens to have tinnitus around, please answer the question I'll formulate below, just keep reading, lol).

Then I made a heartbreaking discovery. Apparently, I could "improve" the audio of my headset by changing the format to 16 bits, 32000 Hz. I shrugged and decided to do so, just for killing time.

Instead, I found out that the sound onto the bad ear was SOOOOO low... Like, I didn't expect it to be THAT low. Apparently, the format actually is either unsupported by Surround/Headset or disables Surround, but still, the picture below doesn't lie:



The difference between formats is so alarming by me, but at least I know one setting works and that's fine, but the change here kind of killed my confidence with my actual hearing.

If somebody knows:

Why does 44100 Hz sound better for me instead of 32000 Hz? Why the latter makes my hearing tank so badly?

If you don't know, it's fine! You can skip the question! You are here to post how you use your headset, if you have one, and have tinnitus or any hearing problems.

If you have any tips to also improve the quality of sound for people like me, you are welcome to share them as I also need to improve things out! Anything helps, after all!

Thanks for reading!

 

That is not just for you... it's for everyone. The higher the sampling frequency, the more high frequency sounds we can digitally capture, which are responsible for a lot of details in a sound. For more info about this, check out Nyquist-Shannon Sampling Theorem.

I generally use the simple "balance" setting to give a boost to my bad ear.

That is a poor man's approximation of what should really happen, which is a boost in frequency bands where I have losses. Hearing aids aim for that, which is why you first do a hearing test at the audiologist's so they can program your hearing aids based on your audiogram.

In my case, since I have high frequency losses, my poor man's implementation also unnecessarily boosts low frequencies, but since they are non-directional (our brains don't detect direction from lows), it does not pollute the feeling of balance to an unacceptable degree.

Good luck!

 

Could you provide a picture of the setting, please?

Also, how's the fidelity with your current tweaks? How does it feel for you?

I gotta reckon my settings aren't exactly centered and it's leaning slightly towards my good ear still.

It sucks, but at least it's an alternative solution so I can then wait for an actual true solution for all of us, and so I don't stay in a corner and despair for my future.

Unfortunately, I have to wait for my appointment as I was diagnosed with ETD, but I feel like I wasn't diagnosed correctly. (I probably mentioned it before, but I don't mind repeating it, it's not gonna go away if I do, LOL!)