[Zeppelin4Life]

Originally Posted by massimo

A couple months ago I had to realize my left ear was hearing differently than the right ear. I was wearing headphones and testing mic positions with my classical guitar. I was scared, really, I did not want to believe it was true. I was hoping there was something wrong with audio connections, whatever. Nope.

I went to the audiologist. My left ear has problems around 4kHz. Ironically, the audiologist said it was an average result - I would never have noticed this had I been a truck driver instead of a musician! Here's the point, like our friend from Milano said, most audio tests today are for truck drivers. Not accurate at all: how distant the right ear track is from the left ear track on the diagram depends on several wild variables, including the operator, how long you take to respond to a frequency test tone, etc. There's a circa 10db confidence error in these graphics! Think when you do those 0.5 db adjustments on your fader or equalizer...
So, something that is simply scaring for me is average for the average physician.

However, I see from other posts I am not alone! This is good and bad at the same time, for obvious reasons. Only, in my case, where loss is about 10db at 4k with respect to my right ear, I must notice that where your problem frequency lies will determine varying results. In my case I had false impressions that my left channel microphone fell short in representing certain finger, string and fret noises that I like. Not true! Just reverse your headphone cans. Same with converter quality. This can really affect the way we judge certain pieces of gear for certain tasks: idiosyncratic noises we want to hear, how "fast" a mic or micpre is thought to be at capturing certain transients, you name it - maybe we do not hear those noises well if they happen to live in those problem frequencies or are picked by the microphone that happens to be panned on the "wrong" ear.

So I learn many of us have this problem. It helps greatly to be aware that ear-to-ear differences are more common than generally believed, and behave accordingly. I have since learned to reverse cans often.
best regards
ciao
Massimo

It's all interesting. If you are really into classical music, noise induced hearing loss is probably not from the music, if any. I used to stand with my guitar amp to my right for hours, and im convinced that mixed with my ride cymbal (also on my right) wore down some of my hearing. However, almost everyone hears slightly differently in each ear even without loss. we have dominant ears and eyes too. I know one of my eyes sees things brighter than the other, I dont know why.