Chinese hurting your ears

[i__forget]

This is coming up quite often in my studies :S

So my ears are sensitive to loud noises, especially to loud frequency sounds. I have found that sometimes when the native speaker of my  lessons (I use various resources so this has happened with various speakers) pronounces the first or forth tone, especially when they feel they have to stress it (in my book I call this shouting), my  ears are bothered and I have to reduce the volume; not something I necessarily want to do since I'm still trying to distinguish the various sounds.

Has anyone else experienced this? Do you think it's a feature of the language or it's a problem with the particular speakers?

Thanks a lot! x

[Shelley]

1 hour ago, i__forget said:

loud noises, especially to loud frequency sounds.

Do you mean high or low frequency sounds or loud sounds happening frequently?

 

You don't say if you are using headphones or speakers. Is there a lot of ambient noise or are you in a quiet environment? When they speak loudly is the volume that distress you or the quality of the sound?

 

Considering you are trying to learn a language good quality audio is essential. Try different headphones/speakers. When you go to buy new speakers or headphones, listen before you buy, try listening with audio that you are familiar with.

 

I own a shop selling audio equipment and we often have people ask us to recommend a make or model of speakers, my advice is always spend as much money as you can afford on the speakers, listen before you buy, the make is not important, the quality of the sound is. Audio is subjective, what sounds good to you may not sound good to me, there is nothing wrong with that, it is just personal preference.

 

The only reason I say spend as much as you can, is because converting the audio to electronics and back again to audio is the most difficult bit. These days almost anyone can build a decent amplifier. So good quality microphones and speakers is the key to good audio. But if a cheap set of speakers or headphones sounds good to you, go for it, its not necessarily the most expensive that will sound the best.

 

It could be the microphone being used by the people you are talking to, in this case you are pretty much stuck, unless you can convince them to adjust their settings or change their mic.

It is a skill to set up mics and speakers to get the best from each. Try adjusting your bass, treble controls and make sure you not overloading your input. If you start with a distorted sound you won't get anywhere.  Just remember to only change one thing at a time, work your way logically through all the variables until you reach a satisfactory sound.

 

Sorry to have hit you with a wall of text, just so happens to be my speciality - audio.

 

Hope it helps and happy listening.

.

[889]

"I own a shop selling audio equipment. . . My advice is always spend as much money as you can afford on the speakers."

 

MRDA.

[歐博思]

I think I follow: I set up a new set of speakers and receiver the other day, and my ears were hurting while listening and testing speaker placement. 

 

I think your issue, and mine, were most likely something to do with the equipment. There are lots of snake-oil salespeople out there (not saying you are Shelley), but the old "you get what you pay for" still holds quite a bit of water methinks, and sometimes one can't really understand cheap until one lives through its quirks.

 

On the other hand some people really do speak grating Chinese. But never the textbooks I've used.... those people are so smooth like butterr

[Shelley]

@889 Perhaps I should make my self clear, I only sell PA speakers, my advice was for Hi-fi or PC speakers which I don't sell. So It is not advice to make me money, it is not so much the fact that they are expensive, what I should have said I suppose was, spend the larger proportion of your budget on speakers and don't worry so much about the amp, the amp is the easy bit.

[imron]

3 hours ago, 889 said:

MRDA.

What does the Men's Roller Derby Association have to do with this? ;-)

[Chris Two Times]

Quote

What does the Men's Roller Derby Association have to do with this? ;-)

 

They are sponsored by Shelley's Soundz Shoppe. Check out their kit, her shop's logo emblazons their jerseys!

[i__forget]

9 hours ago, Shelley said:

Do you mean high or low frequency sounds or loud sounds happening frequently?

Sorry I meant to say high frequency sounds.
 

 

9 hours ago, Shelley said:

You don't say if you are using headphones or speakers.

I use headphones but keep the volume down. My headphones are good... I really notice the difference when they stress some tones..

[Hofmann]

Maybe they're just speaking unnaturally. Do you have the audio files? If you do, you can run the whole batch through a compressor to squish dynamic range. Here's one using Audacity.

[Shelley]

Is it the volume or the quality of the high frequency? If it is the volume then you can as Hofmann suggests compress it, or if it is the quality you may be able to adjust this also use Audacity, by using a graphic equaliser and taking down the frequency(s) that you don't like. Taking out the top end will affect the intelligibility of the speech but it shouldn't be to bad.

It might just need normalising again you can Audacity for this, this takes all the peaks and troughs out to make it all the same overall volume, this may help/

 

it is a complicate thing not actually know what the problem is.

 

Is it possible post a snippet of some audio that shows the problem?

[i__forget]

The problem is the volumn, I don't think I can post anything here. I deal with it by keeping it low  

[889]

Could this be intentional? Isn't there a school of thought that tapes should sometimes be hard to hear?

 

Most people don't speak like professional announcers. You rarely hold a conversation in the quiet of a sound studio. Good practice sometimes means trying to understand something like a muffled announcement on a noisy train platform.

 

[DavyJonesLocker]

Have you been to China or live there? 

[HuayangAcademy]

try watching chinese tv and movies can help you getting used to discerning the sounds