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cyclebrain
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Last seen: 4 months 2 days ago
Joined: Jun 16 2006 - 11:40pm
Please help. Has my hearing gone bad?

I love my audio. But recently I have been hearing a harshness. My system is a Intel NUC running Roon Rock. Roon Rock feeding Benchmark DAC 2. Benchmark feeding a vintage Krell KSA 200S amp via balanced Hero cables. Amp driving Watt/Puppy 5.1 speakers. Simple music sounds great. Single instruments, single vocals. But when the music gets complex, vocal harmonies, multiple instruments I hear such a raspy sound. I tried measuring amp with REW. Less than 1%. I tried measuring overall system using UMIC mic and REW. Still less than 1%. Tried swapping out speakers and cables for PSB Alpha B1. Still sounds raspy. Replaced Krell KSA 200S with First Watt F5 fed by single ended RCA cables. Still sounds raspy. Swapped out Benchmark DAC 2 with Dragonfly. Still not sounding good. Replaced Roon NUC with my Cell phone running my FLAC files using VOX app. Still sounding distorted. So I think I have replaced every component in the whole system chain with no good result. I am worried that maybe it is my hearing. I have not yet done any I.M. Testing. What am I missing?

cyclebrain
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Last seen: 4 months 2 days ago
Joined: Jun 16 2006 - 11:40pm
I have always protected my

I have always protected my hearing even though I am an avid motorcycle rider, shooter and have worked around military aircraft. I do have some frequency loss. But is there some kind of hearing impairment that causes audio distortion?

cyclebrain
cyclebrain's picture
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Last seen: 4 months 2 days ago
Joined: Jun 16 2006 - 11:40pm
I have always protected my

I have always protected my hearing even though I am an avid motorcycle rider, shooter and have worked around military aircraft. I do have some frequency loss. But is there some kind of hearing impairment that causes audio distortion?

LBRTR
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Last seen: 1 year 7 months ago
Joined: Oct 15 2021 - 12:37am
Same issue

Hi cyclebrain,
I am reading this after just joining this forum, and this is EXACTLY what I have been experiencing for some time now. It is driving me crazy. Do you have any update on you findings?

Tim Link
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Last seen: 3 days 21 hours ago
Joined: May 15 2019 - 2:09pm
Something you might check

I have perceived distorted sound. I tested by playing pure sine waves. Measurements and a scope showed purity but I was hearing a fuzzy distortion. I checked the signal on headphones and still heard it. Then I switched to listening to only the left ear and then only the right hear. I perceived distinctly different pitches in each ear. When both ears were combined it gave the distorted impression. Fortunately it went away the next day but you might try it using a tone generator. You can find various tones on Youtube too.

geoffkait
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Last seen: 3 hours 38 min ago
Joined: Apr 29 2008 - 5:10am
How’s the sound on your phone

How’s the sound on your phone, iPad, TV, other sources of sound? How about the sound of birds? Do they also sound distorted? Go to a friend’s house and listen to his system, does it also sound distorted?

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