Interfering Sound Reflections and Frequency Response

Yeah - probably canceling out at lower frequencies - the ones you can hear, but not so much at the higher frequencies that younger ears can hear.

Besides, kids who have grown up with mp3s and cell phones have extra synapses in their brains which have learned to supply the missing bits of garbled sound.

Or, so it seems, anyway.

The ancient pagans had the best design:

http://www.livescience.com/history/070405_greeks_acoustics.html

Probably not so good for rainy Sunday mornings, though.

Oh, yes... My ancient ancestors knew very well what they were doing... I have visited the ancient theater of Epidavros and the acoustics is amazing... The usual demonstration: The audience is quiet and someone rips a piece of paper or drops a coin on the floor... You can hear it clearly wherever you are sitting...

Maybe perhaps you have become aged as Finaly hapened to my very self, maybe, I think. As it happened, it came the time that I was not understanding my wife, come to think of it... I mean the actual spoken word, or my kids... same thing, so I began to research the Hearing aids providers. Big investment for very little equipment by todays standard. BUT I discovered in an online hearing test that I had a frequency shift one ear to the other! never heard of such and I wonder if it is common. I played a 1000Hz tone to set up the test using ear buds. If I removed my left earbud I heard in my right ear lets say 1000Hz, removing the right earbud and inserting the left I heard maybe 840Hz, rapid change of one ear to the other sounded like a London police siren. Has anybody heard of this? How do we test to see what we are actually hearing frequencywise? Consider that if I am hearing two tones, surely out of harmony, instead of one and the overtones! Well no wonder I don't understand my wife. So far, per my search, the best hearing aids only amplify selected frequencies.

Maybe you have a hole in your head?

First, I am neither "an expert" nor up to date - I only know what I found out when researching for my father a few years ago, plus a quick check just now on the Siemens website to see whether/how_much things have changed since then (not a lot).

The "best" hearing aids amplify according to your supposed requirements, adapt this according to the input level - and correlate the adaptation between the two ears - I don't think they do much more yet, though Siemens' blurb does use the phrase "while reducing noise". For many hearing problems you could improve matters a lot further by providing noise suppression and correlation techniques, but SFIK that is not currently being done.

I've not heard of a shift in perceived frequency between the ears before - I imagine it would be pretty troublesome. I can think of two other possibilities that might lead you to this conclusion - the test wasn't doing what it appeared to say (did you try repeating the test with the earphones swapped between your ears), or the volume levels (or hearing sensitivities) were very different, which can give a somewhat siren-like effect when listening one-ear-at-a-time (but doesn't give the same effect when both ears hear the same pitch, as the frequency-shifting effect is in the brain rather than in your ear).

Fyz

I think it is about canceling interference, although is is very hard to be conclusive, whenever acoustics in enclosed area are concerned.

Acoustics in architecture, is as much about magic as it is about science.

In any such structure (your community's church for example), very complex sound patterns may develop, most of which are not 'visible' in advance, at the design stage.

Some of today's design offices are equipped with sound-pattern simulators to complement the structural design, and even so, the patterns of sound progression in three dimensions is extremely complex, sometimes far beyond the simulator's most detailed capability.

If the priest was using a wireless mic, it could be that the battery was getting low and causing poor output from the mic.

this is habitual synchronization of the brain, since these are sound which are normally around your surrounding. for example my mobile phone will ring 21 hours in a day, so sometimes when i leave it at a distance from me i could hear it ringing but in actual fact it is not ringing.

this had happened several time and now i sometimes ignore some of my calls. so i think this should be an issue that should be address critically.

Regards,

Gerald

A visit to certain artefacts of the ancient world can be illuminating (in an audible sort of way). Listening to a speaker located at the centre of an amphitheatre from one of the seats, the lack of any need for amplification (only invented after Michael Faraday & Co. had played about) is initially surprising.