Headphone users, what volume do you set on the MacBook?

technarchtechnarch
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
Hi, was just curious. Last night after experimenting, I went with 100% for the system, and 50% for the Apple DVD player, and adjusted the volume the rest of the way on the self-powered headphone (in this case, a cochlear implant).



If your headphone has batteries or a plug for AC power do you set the same volume settings?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 3
    imacfanimacfan Posts: 444member
    Don't have a Macbook, but if you just said what I thought you said - Kudos! I'd go a very long way for sound quality, but surgery...



    Out of interest, can I ask how well the implant works - especially if you have had a decent previous level of hearing at some point? Apologies if the question seems a bit intrusive, but I'm a medical student, and I'm amazed by the things.



    David
  • Reply 2 of 3
    technarchtechnarch Posts: 36member
    Not a problem at any time to ask questions.



    Technologically, they're pretty interesting devices composed of both hardware and software. I was actually born deaf so I've never had normal hearing. But they work wonderfully well if your brain has enough neural circuitry mapping the auditory cortex to the language center.



    I have purposefully avoided getting technical here because I'm not sure people want a lecture, but I will say that when I was in highschool I used to come home exhausted and sleep for a while due to struggling all day to understand. I don't do that anymore. I thought to myself, if I knew this earlier, I would have done it years ago. The other thing is that I used to play Quake 1 so I was very familiar with the sound effects. Several months after surgery I tried Quake 1 with the hearing aid again. I was absolutely appalled. It was horrible. I could not believe I was able to extract any useful sound out of that mess before.



    The frequency range is wider than hearing aids. But the implant is not like natural hearing. You can use a phone if your brain has enough pathways for sound as mentioned, but music enjoyment is not the same.



    My frequency range is 250-6500 hz. Anything outside that range has to have a harmonic that falls into the range. In the strategy I use, I have 8 channels, that fire one at a time, 765 times a second. This rapid firing generates the appearance of continuous sound.



    Because of the built in cut-offs and compression, it's sometimes hard to tell where distortion/clipping is occuring hence my question about the 2 volume controls.
  • Reply 3 of 3
    imacfanimacfan Posts: 444member
    Thanks very much for the explanation. It's strange that we're happy to think of visual data in discrete pulses (i.e. frames per second), but doing it for sound is something I hardly ever think of.



    Anyhow, let's hope that someone who has a Macbook has something to say...



    David
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