TALKING EARS
News about Earmark Hearing Conservation and the podcast Talking Ears.
Susan Rogers: From Prince to Ph.D.
TapeOp recently published a fantastic and expansive interview with the great Susan Rogers, Ph.D. She is perhaps best known as Prince's engineer...
Susan Rogers, Ph.D. Photo from TapeOp ISSUE #117 JAN/FEB 2017
Susan Rogers: Sound Hero
TapeOp recently published a fantastic and expansive interview with the great Susan Rogers, Ph.D. She is perhaps best known as Prince's engineer for many years in the mid 80s, as well as her extensive career as a record producer and mixing engineer with diverse groups including David Byrne, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Rusted Root, Barenaked Ladies, Tricky, Geggy Tah, and Michael Penn. But, what sets her apart as a bonafide Sound Hero (my new designation for people like her) is her work in Music Cognition. Currently, she is focusing her studying on the causes of tinnitus and hyperacusis.
"The mechanisms are just now being understood, but at Berklee I can investigate our musician populations to see if some musicians are at a greater risk than others of developing tinnitus. Will it be the horn players, or the drummers, or the electric guitar players? Will it be the vocalists? Think about it, if you're singing in a choir, you're singing next to a sound source that can get really loud. Really, really loud. Who's at the greatest risk?"
Music Cognition
To hear more of Susan Rogers speaking about the discipline of Music Cognition, check out her video explanation of her work with the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory. To hear her speak about music and auditory science, it is clear the connections are deep and endlessly explorable:
The arts and sciences, I discovered, have way more similarities than I ever realized. It's just that the directionality of it is different. In the arts we imagine a condensed ball of dark matter that contains all of humanity, all of human knowledge, and you explode it into billions and billions of individual expressions of the human condition. Paintings, movies, television shows, books, records, and songs. You've got billions of individual ways of describing what it means to be human. Science is the same exact process, in reverse. We look at all the individuals, then we work our way back and try to describe what is universal. How do people hear? How do they think? How do they pay attention? How do they decide? How do they learn? How do they memorize? How do they grow? That's what science does. So it's the same journey, just in a different direction. You can explore record making with the goals of individual expression, or you can explore auditory science with the goal of what we all have in common.
Here is hoping for a continued stream of excellence from Dr. Rogers in helping us understand everything from a solid groove to the cause of the most puzzling auditory disorders, such as tinnitus and hyperacusis. Clearly, a great background in music creation can lead to a great career in music cognition and hearing science.
Musicians Earplugs - Part 1: The Science Behind The Sound
“How do Musicians Earplugs actually work?”
This is one of the most common questions I answer during Hearing Conservation Consultations, so it is as good a place as any to start a blog series on Musicians Earplugs...
“How do Musicians Earplugs actually work?”
Musicians Earplugs (tm) photo credit: www.sensaphonics.com
This is one of the most common questions I answer during Hearing Conservation Consultations, so it is as good a place as any to start a blog series on Musicians Earplugs. Further installments in this series will cover the available filter levels, importance of build material, purpose an acoustic seal in the ear canal, and tips for acclimating to the use of earplugs during rehearsal, performance, and audio production work.
What are Musicians Earplugs?
Attenuation mimics the natural resonance of the open ear canal
Custom musicians earplugs are the standard professional option for reducing sound levels while maintaining the fidelity of the signal. They are custom built molds made from impressions of the individual's ears. The design allows them to mimic the natural resonance of the open ear canal, which differs from the acoustics of foam earplugs or other generic 'music earplug' options.
How do they work?
The answer is wonderfully simple, but it also speaks to the high level of quality control that is required on the part of the lab to ensure a relatively flat broad-band attenuation (sound level reduction). This is accomplished by combining a sound attenuating filter with a resonance channel that emulates the acoustic parameters of an open ear canal. The following technical information is presented by Etymotic Research, the company that developed the design and manufactures the ER-series filters:
Musicians Earplugs™ buttons have a diaphragm which functions as an acoustic compliance, while the volume of air in the sound bore of the custom earmold acts as an acoustic mass. The combination of the two produces a resonance at approximately 2700 Hz (as in the normal ear), which results in smooth, flat attenuation.
ER-9 Provides flat 9-dB sound reduction through the mid range and 15 dB in the highs
ER-15 Provides uniform 15-dB sound reduction across frequencies
ER-25 Provides 25-dB relatively flat sound reduction across frequencies
Attenuation/frequency response of ER Series Musicians Earplugs (tm) compaired with generic foam earplugs. www.etymotic.com
What do they sound like?
In the simplest terms, listening through Musicians Earplugs sounds like the original signal, but quieter; it could be said that they are the closest thing to a volume control for real-world sounds available. Dr. Brian Fligor created a clear demonstration of the sound of Musicians Earplugs by using data from in-ear sound level measurements. You can listen to these sound examples on the Boston Audiology Consultants webpage.
Though Musicians Earplugs are often marketed as "flat" or "uniform", it is important to point out that nothing is every truly flat. If you've ever worked with any sound device, electronic or acoustic, this is an accepted and understood fact. It would be more fair to describe Musicians Earplugs as "balanced" and "accurate", as they maintain the relative balance of tonal components and harmonics across a very broad spectrum. Everyone has a different perception and response, so check out the tutorials section for individual reactions.
Further reading about Musicians Earplugs
Contact Earmark Hearing Conservation to discuss whether custom earplugs are right for you and your individual situation. For more information about our services, please visit our services page.
Sound on Mars?
The inclusion of a microphone on the new Mars 2020 vehicle will be the first time we pick up the sounds of Mars directly...
It is hard to be as excited about hearing as we are and not be excited about sound in general. That is why it is with intense curiosity that we are reading about the plans to include a microphone on the Mars 2020 rover vehicle. This represents the first time we will be able to pick up the sounds of Mars directly and transmit them to Earth. As if recording the Martian soundscape isn’t reason enough, the main purpose of the microphone is to serve the SuperCam and the LIBS (Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy) sensor. What does the LIBS do? Glad you asked: it vaporizes rocks with a laser.
Sounds from space, or more accurately sounds derived from the sensor and radar data of space probes, have been circulating the internet for years. They are infinitely inspiring, interesting, strange, and beautiful in their own way. They are also admittedly geeky and densely scientific, so it is understandable if the general public hasn't explored them to their fullest. The great Carl Sagan was perhaps the first to recognize the potential public interest in actual Martian sounds. Sylvestre Maurice, a planetary scientist at the Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology in France, told Space.com:
"It's science, but it's a little bit different… It's cool, not obscure."