Audiometric hearing loss maps directly onto missed timbral and speech-sound differences

Evidence

Pure-tone audiometry tests a subject’s ability to detect different frequen­ cies, and the dBHL values indicate the extent to which the subject’s hearing is reduced at different frequencies. It thus indicates those frequency regions in which a subject is perhaps less sensitive than normally hearing listeners. This could, for example, be interpreted in practice in terms of timbral dif­ ferences between specific musical sounds that might not be heard, or vowel or other speech sounds that might be difficult to perceive. — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 2352

Categorization

• SEED: An essay angle: how a musician’s or speaker’s audiogram predicts which textures and phonemes they can no longer perceive — hearing loss as a timbre filter.