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Comment by kevincennis | Hacker News Reader

I was expecting to be pretty underwhelmed by this app, but I have to say, I'm impressed.

My office has a pretty loud HVAC system, and it totally kills the low end when I listen with a pair of cheap Apple earbuds.

I took the little SoundFocus hearing test, turned on their EQ, and the difference was pretty pronounced. It killed a bit more high end than I would have liked (seemed to roll off after about 12k), but the lows were definitely spot-on.

I'll probably use this during my commute on the super loud city busses.

edit:

I don't actually suffer from hearing loss. I'm just picky about audio quality (former recording/mixing engineer) and have an unfortunate tendency to spend a lot of time in noisy places.

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Adding noise can damage the ears, and adds more stress to the body.. just saying..

Not sure what you mean by "adding noise".

I assume if external noise is drowning out the music / changing how it sounds, then the music will be modified to let you hear certain sounds better via making them louder.

loceng, we try to avoid that - a simple equalizer will create an amplification of frequency bands without gain control, so you get a sound of higher amplitude/magnitude, which can have a negative impact as you pointed out.

We use some techniques to rebalance your music - by making sounds that are softer in the mix louder, while keeping the very loud sounds at the same level. We also try to change the relative volume of the frequency bands you do not hear well, while preserving the overall volume.

Since psychoacoustics vary a bit from person to person, it may be perceived as mildly louder or softer than the original, but overall it will be at a similar volume level.

I'm legitimately curious about how a former sound engineer finds himself using a pair of cheap Apple earbuds at work.

I've found that it's actually harder for me to concentrate on doing real work when I have high-end monitoring.

It almost always seems to come from snare drums. I'll be working away, not really paying attention to whatever random song comes on, and all of a sudden I'm like "Wow. The reverb on that snare is beautiful. I don't think that's digital -- it sounds like a real plate. And it's got so much attack. The compression is perfect. I bet that's an 1176. It's too fast to be an LA-2A, and too clean to be a Distressor".

And then I just have to know who mixed it. So I'll do a quick Google search, and find out that it was A.J. Mogis. And then I'll need to find some other record that he mixed and load it up on Rdio.

And this happens All. The. Time. when I use nice headphones.

With shitty earbuds, I basically have no idea what the fuck is happening, so I can kind of enjoy the music passively and actually get stuff done.

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