A listening question about volume, headphones, background noise, etc

Ask specific questions about your target languages. Beginner questions welcome!
User avatar
coldrainwater
Blue Belt
Posts: 686
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 4:53 am
Location: Magnolia, TX
Languages: EN(N), ES(rusty), DE(), FR(studies)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7636
x 2381

Re: A listening question about volume, headphones, background noise, etc

Postby coldrainwater » Wed Jun 06, 2018 12:25 am

reineke wrote:Put away those headphones and turn the TV down.
Never. My eyes fear the TV like a vampire the sun. In darkness lies serenity. Light is emitted and I go promptly into hiding. Sound gets not past the walls I hide behind in the midst of a full retreat.

I wonder sidelong, how those little hearing helpers work that claim to boost voice clarity without amplifying volume. I have a holiday gifting tactic in mind for a few relatives this December. Perhaps I should try them on myself first. Glasses for the ears, perchance.
0 x

User avatar
reineke
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3570
Joined: Wed Jan 06, 2016 7:34 pm
Languages: Fox (C4)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=6979
x 6554

Re: A listening question about volume, headphones, background noise, etc

Postby reineke » Wed Jun 06, 2018 12:43 am

coldrainwater wrote:In my case, I am super biased toward headphone use. If memory serves, it took me about 10 minutes to make that call, a snap decision if ever there were one, and I haven’t turned back. It was, for me, easily the difference between being able to fully comprehend and not being able to understand much of anything. As a practical matter, I deal with noise pollution daily and adding more to ‘train’ that skill simply wouldn’t be needed. Headphones don't totally eliminate the problems, they just give me a fighting chance.

As always, I am grateful for and appreciate all the different perspectives offered so far. The more polar the viewpoints, the more interesting, to me at least.

coldrainwater wrote:
reineke wrote:Put away those headphones and turn the TV down.
Never. My eyes fear the TV like a vampire the sun. In darkness lies serenity. Light is emitted and I go promptly into hiding. Sound gets not past the walls I hide behind in the midst of a full retreat.

I wonder sidelong, how those little hearing helpers work that claim to boost voice clarity without amplifying volume.


Then turn down your stereo. The point was that you should challenge your ear. You seem to be leaning toward getting cochlear implants.
0 x

User avatar
reineke
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3570
Joined: Wed Jan 06, 2016 7:34 pm
Languages: Fox (C4)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=6979
x 6554

Re: A listening question about volume, headphones, background noise, etc

Postby reineke » Wed Jun 06, 2018 1:30 am

Effects of Age and Working Memory Capacity on Speech Recognition Performance in Noise Among Listeners With Normal Hearing.

This study aimed to determine if younger and older listeners with normal hearing who differ on working memory span perform differently on speech recognition tests in noise. Older adults typically exhibit poorer speech recognition scores in noise than younger adults, which is attributed primarily to poorer hearing sensitivity and more limited working memory capacity in older than younger adults.

RESULTS:
Significant effects of age and working memory capacity were observed on the speech recognition measures in noise, but these effects were mediated somewhat by the speech signal. Specifically, main effects of age and working memory were revealed for both words and sentences, but the interaction between the two was significant for sentences only. For these materials, effects of age were observed for listeners in the low working memory groups only. Although all cognitive measures were significantly correlated with speech recognition in noise, working memory span was the most important variable accounting for speech recognition performance.

CONCLUSIONS:
The results indicate that older adults with high working memory capacity are able to capitalize on contextual cues and perform as well as young listeners with high working memory capacity for sentence recognition. The data also suggest that listeners with normal hearing and low working memory capacity are less able to adapt to distortion of speech signals caused by background noise, which requires the allocation of more processing resources to earlier processing stages. These results indicate that both younger and older adults with low working memory capacity and normal hearing are at a disadvantage for recognizing speech in noise.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27232071

Hearing With Your Ears, Listening With Your Brain

"Scientists in recent years have grown increasingly aware of the integral role cognition plays in communication, and this awareness has spawned a new field of research called cognitive hearing science. This field examines the way our minds process the auditory signals being sent to the brain, factor in the complexity of what we’re listening to, and adjust to the quality of listening conditions.

The findings from this field hold particular significance for people with hearing impairments, whose inner ears don’t capture complete auditory information for the brain to process. Long-term effects of insufficient bottom-up signal processing may affect what is stored in the brain, sometimes causing a negative cycle; without understanding, knowledge is not updated, which in turn leads to reduced understanding in the future...

A New Model
Recent models of language understanding under adverse or distracting conditions have emphasized the complex interactions among language signal, working memory capacity (WMC) and related executive functions, and episodic and semantic long-term memory (LTM)....

"Hearing aid manufacturers and dispensers must be made aware of the fact that only people with a high WMC will benefit from more advanced signal processing, and that the fitting of hearing aids should be based on more than the person’s auditory perception of speech."

https://www.psychologicalscience.org/ob ... your-brain
1 x

User avatar
coldrainwater
Blue Belt
Posts: 686
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 4:53 am
Location: Magnolia, TX
Languages: EN(N), ES(rusty), DE(), FR(studies)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7636
x 2381

Sound bars

Postby coldrainwater » Thu Jul 05, 2018 4:17 am

reineke wrote:Then turn down your stereo. The point was that you should challenge your ear. You seem to be leaning toward getting cochlear implants.

I ended up getting a soundbar. With it, I can understand voice so long as I can perceive the sound regardless of whisper level (language agnostic between L1 and L2 for comprehensible input). It is also quite clear even against obnoxious interstate noise pollution. That sort of pollution has a sort of bass-heavy boombox, shake-your-dwelling effect with intermittent claxon. The trick and what makes the soundbar practically valuable lies in portability and position-ability. I needed something that was just as easy to hook up to my smartphone as it would have been to [name some modern server with audio card/port], can play in any environment, and can travel with me. Turning the volume up on a soundbar like that too high actually causes what seems like unpleasant distortion (but, using weak devices, it likely would not be possible to play it loud enough to damage hearing like it would with a TV). There is a sweet spot at a pretty low decibel level.

To be crystal clear for others reading the thread, it is about locating the device within optimal soundwave proximity to your ears and thus being able to turn the volume more or less as low as you want. Small devices (smartphones/portables) are often annexed with poor speakers. Some of my laptops are more apt for emitting a death rattle than a melody. Seems pertinent to the thread at hand given the variable state of tech.
1 x

NoManches
Blue Belt
Posts: 654
Joined: Thu Feb 25, 2016 2:21 pm
Location: Estados Unidos (near the Mexican border)
Languages: English - (N)
Spanish - B2 +
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7942
x 1459

Re: Sound bars

Postby NoManches » Thu Jul 05, 2018 7:30 pm

coldrainwater wrote:
reineke wrote:Then turn down your stereo. The point was that you should challenge your ear. You seem to be leaning toward getting cochlear implants.

I ended up getting a soundbar. With it, I can understand voice so long as I can perceive the sound regardless of whisper level (language agnostic between L1 and L2 for comprehensible input). It is also quite clear even against obnoxious interstate noise pollution. That sort of pollution has a sort of bass-heavy boombox, shake-your-dwelling effect with intermittent claxon. The trick and what makes the soundbar practically valuable lies in portability and position-ability. I needed something that was just as easy to hook up to my smartphone as it would have been to [name some modern server with audio card/port], can play in any environment, and can travel with me. Turning the volume up on a soundbar like that too high actually causes what seems like unpleasant distortion (but, using weak devices, it likely would not be possible to play it loud enough to damage hearing like it would with a TV). There is a sweet spot at a pretty low decibel level.

To be crystal clear for others reading the thread, it is about locating the device within optimal soundwave proximity to your ears and thus being able to turn the volume more or less as low as you want. Small devices (smartphones/portables) are often annexed with poor speakers. Some of my laptops are more apt for emitting a death rattle than a melody. Seems pertinent to the thread at hand given the variable state of tech.




Hmmm you have me interested. Maybe I should look into getting one too. I noticed now that the speakers on my television are in the rear, and just aren't that good. There is still the fact that I can hear English fine, but for Spanish I need to turn to volume up. I did notice that at around episode 40 or so, I am able to watch my favorite novela with the volume lower than what I used to have it at.
1 x
DOUBLE Super Challenge
Spanish Movies
: 10795 / 18000

Spanish Books
: 4415 / 10000

Cainntear
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3469
Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2015 11:04 am
Location: Scotland
Languages: English(N)
Advanced: French,Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Intermediate: Italian, Catalan, Corsican
Basic: Welsh
Dabbling: Polish, Russian etc
x 8666
Contact:

Re: A listening question about volume, headphones, background noise, etc

Postby Cainntear » Sat Jul 07, 2018 7:51 pm

白田龍 wrote:The sound of a TV in a not loud volume in a quiet room is clear and high quality. There should be no need to fill the gaps, one should be able to understand each and every word.

The extra clearness of headphones is unatural and unlike anything in the real world.

I know this is an old post, but I thought it worth responding to.

To my mind, it’s the tv that’s unnatural. A tv produces all its sound for two speakers that really aren’t very far apart. In the real world, if someone drops a metal object, you can turn your head instantly to where it was dropped, but the same object dropped in a tv programme is just going to sound like it’s coming from the tv.

One of the key ways we can separate the sounds we’re hearing is by using our two ears. With headphones we start to reinstate some of the lost location data, making sound source separation a much easier task.

We find the task of source separation easier in languages we’re familiar with, because we can recognise the patterns of the language, but in a language we’re not familiar with, we just need more data to get full comprehension, and the headphones give us that.
5 x

NoManches
Blue Belt
Posts: 654
Joined: Thu Feb 25, 2016 2:21 pm
Location: Estados Unidos (near the Mexican border)
Languages: English - (N)
Spanish - B2 +
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7942
x 1459

Re: A listening question about volume, headphones, background noise, etc

Postby NoManches » Wed Jul 25, 2018 3:54 pm

Update:

Still haven't bought a soundbar BUT I do have a small Bluetooth speaker called the Oontz Angle or something like that....it has good reviews on Amazon. Long story short, I was having trouble with a TV show and immediately after watching the show from this speaker and not the TV, my comprehension is like 5x's better. There is something about how my TV (or TV's in general) put out sound, combined with noise pollution that make listening to a TV pretty unnatural and difficult. Our comprehension is so good in our native languages that we never have a problem with watching TV, but trying to do so in a TL shows us that it can be quite tricky. If you are having problems with with and understanding TV in your TL, it might be a ton of factors, but having good speakers might help you out a bit.
2 x
DOUBLE Super Challenge
Spanish Movies
: 10795 / 18000

Spanish Books
: 4415 / 10000

User avatar
zenmonkey
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2528
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:21 pm
Location: California, Germany and France
Languages: Spanish, English, French trilingual - German (B2/C1) on/off study: Persian, Hebrew, Tibetan, Setswana.
Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=859
x 7030
Contact:

Re: A listening question about volume, headphones, background noise, etc

Postby zenmonkey » Wed Jul 25, 2018 5:57 pm

I’m surprised people haven’t mentioned two major factors involved in transmitted media that affect listening comprehension.

1) All recorded media is frequency clipped. The info provided is sufficient in your L1 but you are always getting less info than live performance. If it’s a digital transmission there is lossy compression going on. This means little chunks of info are missing all over the place. Your brain corrects for that but it’s guessing. Add to that all of the other reproduction elements that have been mentioned.

2) as was quoted briefly in an article - listening is a brain integrated function. It also uses visual clues from the mouth as you see the sound being produced (search for the McGurkin Effect thread). Obviously tv has all sorts of factors that affect this visual input.
5 x
I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar

User avatar
Ani
Brown Belt
Posts: 1433
Joined: Mon Mar 14, 2016 8:58 am
Location: Alaska
Languages: English (N), speaks French, Russian & Icelandic (beginner)
x 3840
Contact:

Re: A listening question about volume, headphones, background noise, etc

Postby Ani » Thu Aug 02, 2018 6:04 pm

NoManches wrote:Update:

Still haven't bought a soundbar BUT I do have a small Bluetooth speaker called the Oontz Angle or something like that....it has good reviews on Amazon. Long story short, I was having trouble with a TV show and immediately after watching the show from this speaker and not the TV, my comprehension is like 5x's better. There is something about how my TV (or TV's in general) put out sound, combined with noise pollution that make listening to a TV pretty unnatural and difficult. Our comprehension is so good in our native languages that we never have a problem with watching TV, but trying to do so in a TL shows us that it can be quite tricky. If you are having problems with with and understanding TV in your TL, it might be a ton of factors, but having good speakers might help you out a bit.


For my part, since I read this thread, I've been trying to challenge my ear as Reineke suggested. I noticed total improvement in listening in challenging environments. I'm not feeling the need to increase volume anymore. I'm having an easier time following the thread of a podcast through interruptions -- like when someone starts talking to me in English I can still basically follow what's happening in my podcast (at least for a couple minutes, not longer). I'm not against better speakers but TV takes a lot of guessing, especially dubbed TV that has all the wrong facial movements. I think it's worth trying to get better at the guessing since it's a skill you'll benefit from forever.
4 x
But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

NoManches
Blue Belt
Posts: 654
Joined: Thu Feb 25, 2016 2:21 pm
Location: Estados Unidos (near the Mexican border)
Languages: English - (N)
Spanish - B2 +
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7942
x 1459

Re: A listening question about volume, headphones, background noise, etc

Postby NoManches » Fri Sep 21, 2018 3:54 pm

Another update to a topic that I consider interesting and important:

I bought myself a soundbar as recommended by @coldrainwater. The simple act of directing sound in my TL towards me makes a huge difference. When watching TV with no special speakers, it sounds as if the sound comes from the back of my TV, bounces off the wall, and then goes wherever. Years and years of listening to English has given me great comprehension skills, and the ability to "fill in the gaps" and make sense of less than optimal audio.

I have a few podcasts that I really like, but can barely hear when driving due to road noise. As an experiment I plan on only listening to this show with my headphones. After a month or so I will go back and see if I see any improvements when listening to this show while driving.

********************************************************************************
I believe there was a post on the old HTLAL forum about "training with sub-optimal" audio, or something like that. I CANNOT find it and it is driving me crazy. If anybody can link me to that discussion it would be greatly appreciated. I was thinking about this topic yesterday (sub-optimal audio) and think that you are better off listening to tons and tons of really clear, high quality audio. Eventually you'll develop to ability to "fill in the gaps", (@Systematiker confirmed my suspicions on this). In other words, continuing to listen to this hard to hear podcast while driving might not be a good use of my time. It seems like my time would be better used if I listened to high quality stuff.


**I added a few asterisks ** in hopes that it would draw that attention of somebody who remebers which discussion I'm talking about. Didn't want to create a thread asking for a link to the old site.
3 x
DOUBLE Super Challenge
Spanish Movies
: 10795 / 18000

Spanish Books
: 4415 / 10000


Return to “Practical Questions and Advice”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests