Noise damage creates a 4-kHz notch while aging affects high frequencies

Evidence

Noise-induced hearing threshold shifts are typically characterized by a notch in the hearing threshold in the 4-kHz range. The effect of age on the degradation of the sensitivity of hearing is individual, but typical hearing threshold shifts due to presbyacusis are shown in Figure 19.2b. The figure shows that age-related hearing loss is typically present at high frequencies. However, the effect of age on hearing loss is difficult to isolate from other factors, such as noise exposure. — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 2661