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poodlesrule
November 3rd, 2010, 07:07 PM
I was at a Costco-like store last night, and a few Yamaha keyboards were on display.

I am quite amazed at how 200-500 dollar keyboards sound, these days (at least to my neophyte ears) and I spent a couple of minutes noodling around the keyboard.

I hit the last two keys at right-end of the 88-key model (DGX-530), and all I could hear from the on-board speakers was click-click. I should mention that there was a slight amount of background noise in the store.
Back home I looked it up and found that the frequency I was somehow missing hearing is around 4500 Hz.

Could that be possible?
I know I have some congenital hearing loss, and haven' t bothered to have it checked in a while, but, that is a pretty low threshold, here.

Puzzled.

Katastrophe
November 3rd, 2010, 07:13 PM
You sure the keyboard wasn't malfunctioning? Those floor models can get pretty beat up.

Otherwise, time to get the ol' hearing checked. Start taking precautions to save your hearing as well (ear plugs for loud noises, turn the music and tv down).

I've got some hearing loss in my left ear from too much loud music as a youngster. I try my best to make sure my kids don't have the same problem!

Spudman
November 3rd, 2010, 11:01 PM
Four thousand hertz is the chain saw frequency. It is the most irritating frequency there is, by far. It is also the frequency of finger nails on a chalk board.

It's not uncommon to lose upper frequencies as we age or subject ourselves to loud or prolonged sounds.

You might give this (http://www.techmind.org/audio/) a try and find out the exact range you are missing. It will let you get pretty exact with the frequency.

For a quick test this page will let you try some tones right away. The previous is an applet to download.

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/hearing.html