I spent 29 years listening for wrong notes. Then I took a hearing test.
For twenty-nine years my job was hearing things other people missed. The second clarinet a quarter-tone flat. The trumpet who came in a beat early. A snare drum that needed new heads. I ran the band program at a high school in Lansing, Michigan, and I was proud of my ears.
So it was a little humbling, at 58, when my wife started repeating herself at dinner and my students' parents started sounding like they were mumbling at concerts. I put off a hearing test for a year because I was sure I'd ace it. I didn't.
This site is my attempt to understand what I was handed that day: a chart called an audiogram, a few unfamiliar terms, and a recommendation I didn't want. I've written it the way I used to write program notes for concerts, for people who are curious but not experts. I'm a music teacher, not an audiologist, and nothing here replaces your own test.
How common this is
- 1 in 8
- Americans aged 12 and older have hearing loss in both ears, about 30 million people
- 10%
- of adults aged 55 to 64 have hearing loss bad enough to benefit from hearing aids
- 22%
- of adults aged 65 to 74 do
Source: NIDCD quick statistics on hearing.
Those figures from the NIDCD's statistics page surprised me. I'd thought of hearing loss as something for people in their eighties. One in ten in my own age group was already past the point where hearing aids would help, and plenty more were sliding toward it without knowing.
The words on the report
My report put a label on each ear. These are the categories most audiologists use, with what I'd translate them to after a year of living with mine.
| Degree | Hearing level (dB HL) | What it can feel like |
|---|---|---|
| Normal | -10 to 15 | No trouble, even with whispers |
| Slight | 16 to 25 | Soft speech and whispers start to slip |
| Mild | 26 to 40 | Fine one-on-one, hard in restaurants and groups |
| Moderate | 41 to 55 | Everyday conversation takes effort |
| Moderately severe | 56 to 70 | Group conversation is very hard without help |
| Severe | 71 to 90 | Most speech is missed without hearing aids |
| Profound | 91 and above | Even loud sounds may not be heard |
The ranges come from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association's consumer guide, which also notes that some clinics draw the top of "normal" at 20 or 25 dB rather than 15. The "what it can feel like" column is mine.
My result was normal to mild in the low and middle pitches and mild to moderate in the high ones, with a dip in the right ear that the audiologist said looked like noise. Thirty years in a band room will do that. A rehearsal with the full drumline indoors is louder than most people would guess.
What's on this site
I've written up the three things I most wanted explained when I walked out of that booth:
- How to read the audiogram itself, what the X's and O's mean, and what my particular shape said about the cause.
- My first months with over-the-counter hearing aids, including what I'd do differently.
- Why noisy restaurants got so tiring, and what the speech-in-noise test measured.
If you haven't had a test yet, the most useful thing I can point you to is this guide on how to prepare for a hearing test, which covers resting your ears beforehand and what happens in the booth. I wish I'd read it first. I went straight from a Saturday marching band clinic to my appointment, which is exactly what you're not supposed to do.
One thing I'd tell every musician
Get a baseline test early, in your forties if you can, and keep the copy. An audiogram is most useful when you have an old one to compare it with. I had nothing to compare mine to, so I'll never know how much of my loss came in the last five years and how much was there at forty.
Neil Haverford taught high school band in Lansing, Michigan, for twenty-nine years. He got his first full hearing test at 58 and started this site to explain the results to himself. He is a music teacher, not a hearing professional.