Hi Everyone! I'm starting to notice more and more as I get older that my hearing is starting to go. I'm having troubles hearing voices in crowed rooms, tv, music blah blah blah... Anyways I thought it might be a good project to attempt to build an equalizer which I can plug in-line with a head set and try to level out the sound frequencies I am having difficulty with (750-6k) range. I'm thinking small in size so it can be portable. Does anyone know of any existing circuits or can you point me in a direction to go? I'm at a beginner level here.
Thanks.
ps. I'm trying to avoid the hearing aid route for now... ha ha.

 

Since you are wanting to avoid the hearing aid route yet wanting to build a hearing aid anyway...... Huh?

How about I send you my wife for a few months. After listening to her ramble on about nothing day in and day out along with her usual dose of griping and whining she should make you appreciate being as dead as you are!

 

MXR brand guitar accessory: http://www.samash.com/mxr-kfk1-ten-band-equalizer-guitar-effects-pedal-mkfk1xxxx

If you want to build one yourself, that's another matter.

 

Have you told your family doctor about this?

This is an electrical/electronics forum, not a personal health care clinic.

See you family doctor and get a referral to an audiologist to have your hearing tested pronto.

In my case, further testing revealed that my hearing loss was partly a result of a tumor on the auditory nerve and required immediate medical intervention.

I have lost more than 50% of my hearing and now wear hearing aids in both ears.

 

Uhhh... thanks for your... uhhh response? This wasn't intended to become a post about hearing loss or personal health. I simply thought that it would be fun to build a project with a practical use. I only included the hearing issue so that you people would have an idea of the outcome I was looking for. #12 thanks for the link.

 

Speak up, I can't hear you..



I would start off with recording some normal sounds you expect to be able to "clarify" for your hearing into the computer and playing with the frequency response curve in something like Audacity to see if you can make what you want to hear more audible to you this way.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Once you have some idea of the frequency range you need to modify and how it should be tweaked you have a much better point to start your design from. You should definitely record, process and play back in stereo, a lot of our ability to pick out sounds from each other depends on timing cues in the arriving wavefront. Binaural recording is particularly good for this with headphones since it more or less preserves the original wavefront as it arrived at a set of ears.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_recording

Binaural microphones aren't dirt cheap but they aren't outrageously expensive either and nothing is better for headphone listening.

http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cgi-bin/gold/item/SP-BMC-2-RA

 

The device #12 suggested would be good to determine what degree of gain you need at what specific frequencies for best comprehension. Then you could make a small portable unit with fixed compensation, duplicating the gain vs. frequency you determined, which someone here could help you with.

Here's a smaller, cheaper, battery powered unit. It has fewer bands but appears to cover the voice band reasonably well.

And here's a Radio Shack 3-band headphone equalizer with built-in stereo mics.

 

Good shopping, crutschow. The RS model doesn't reveal its frequency bands as 900Hz, 3000Hz, and 6000Hz unless you dig down to the Users Manual, so here it is for those who don't want to spend 5 minutes digging for the specs.

I like the ARTEC because it has more flexibility with 8 bands and a better price than the first one I found.