Audio mixers’ occupational hearing loss can impair their sound-quality judgments

Evidence

Hearing loss is an occupational hazard in many professions, unfortunately including professional audio. At the very least, mixers exposed to periods of very loud sound incur temporary hearing loss. Repetitions of such exposures result in permanent hearing loss. As illustrated in Section 3.2 and discussed in detail in Chapter 17, both of these seriously affect what is heard in mixes, and it is not consistent. Judgments of sound quality are impaired. Paradoxically, the people who do the mixes may not be the best judges of the results. — , Toole, Floyd E - Sound reproduction-…, 1246

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to professional degeneration where the makers of the artifact are least able to evaluate it — parallels writer/editor and winemaker blindness to flaws. — connects to: Hearing-impaired professionals give confident but unreliable sound quality judgments.; Hearing loss makes listener opinions unreliable no matter how experienced; Occupational noise limits fail to protect recreational hearing enjoyment — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 1918 (+3 more)

Related

• Even modest hearing loss increases variability in sound quality judgments (similarity 0.93)
• Hearing loss makes listener opinions unreliable no matter how experienced (similarity 0.90)
• Hearing-impaired professionals give confident but unreliable sound quality judgments. (similarity 0.86)
• Mild hearing loss makes trained listeners give inconsistent sound quality judgments (similarity 0.85)
• Hearing-normal listeners give far more consistent loudspeaker quality ratings. (similarity 0.85)
• Hearing-impaired listeners give inconsistent sound-quality ratings unlike normal-hearing subjects (similarity 0.85)
• Occupational noise limits fail to protect recreational hearing enjoyment (similarity 0.83)
• Musicians make poor or unreliable subjective loudspeaker evaluators (similarity 0.83)
• Averaging hearing loss across frequencies can mask serious impairment (similarity 0.83)
• Musicians judge loudspeakers on different rationales and can be inconsistent raters. (similarity 0.82)
• Hidden hearing loss impairs separating sounds in complex acoustic scenes (similarity 0.81)
• Occupational hearing-conservation guidelines fail to protect audio engineers’ ears (similarity 0.80)
• Age and accumulated noise exposure degrade even expert listening panel reliability (similarity 0.80)
• Hearing loss widens critical bands and alters music perception itself (similarity 0.80)
• Occupational hearing guidelines allow damage, not prevention of loss. (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Hearing loss widens critical bands and alters music perception itself #expands (0.80) — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 1897