Tweeters. Have you fitted them? Was BBC R4 better at motorway speeds?

[langserve]

Advice please. I'm forming a strong impression that due to aging my hearing is declining and in particular medium to high frequencies whish of course includes speech and vocal power both of which are my preferred listening.

I'm thinking adding some tweeters at shoulder height (or so) might be a good little project for when the weather improves. Have any of you done it? If so, was it (hand on heart) worth it and what were the technical details? There are a few options but the main candidates seem to be either by the front triangular windows, in the bottom of the side pillar or in the top of the door.

Is there a crossover built in anywhere? Does it even matter very much? I see the unit on AliExpress has a harness style connector which might or might not suit my system. The same sort of thing sold here in Japan doesn't come with a connector/harness just wires which I assume you run to the centre console unit and wire into the existing speakers wires adding a crossover if you want.

Anyway, below a couple of links to what I have found so far and all advice/experience gratefully received.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001297712375.html?spm=a2g0s.8937460.0.0.677d2e0eoV7q6N

https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/HONDA-Tweeter-Panel-Specific-Right/dp/B091KGHBXW/ref=sr_1_1?crid=37BGJ4T3NC0UY&keywords=honda+fit+tweeter%27&qid=1640855583&sprefix=honda+20fit+20tweeter%2Caps%2C195&sr=8-1

[Kenneve]

Why not run with the Treble turned up to Max ?
With my 84 year old ears I run with:-
Bass = 0
Mid range = 0
Treble = +6
I find that perfectly acceptable.
I feel that any additional Treble increase would make the overall sound quite 'Tinny'
There is quite a wide range of adjustment available and I guess you could also try reducing the Bass somewhat.
I also have the Auto Volume Increase With Speed set to On.

[langserve]

That's a good point but in order to hear treble well your ears need to be pointed at the source. That's why they are mounted high. Bass sounds are not nearly as directional. I'll try tweaking the treble and seeing what that does but I am still curious to hear from someone who has fitted high mount tweeters.

[culzean]

That's a good point but in order to hear treble well your ears need to be pointed at the source. That's why they are mounted high. Bass sounds are not nearly as directional. I'll try tweaking the treble and seeing what that does but I am still curious to hear from someone who has fitted high mount tweeters.

One thing I like about the Civic is the sound system as standard is really good, with high mounted tweeters.

[Pine]

I haven't had a Mk3 Jazz but most cars have a feature under the Vehicle Settings called something like Speed Related Volume control, make sure this is turned to the maximum.  This increases the radio volume at higher speeds to compensate for the increased road noise.

[langserve]

Yep, I have had a look and although mine is strangely translated Japanese there is something that looks like that. There is also an equaliser so I have tweaked the upper frequencies. We will see, but I am still interested in fitting tweeters because of the directional nature of higher frequency sound propagation. Seems like no-one else is though . Maybe my ears are especially poor at higher frequencies.

[richardfrost]

Maybe my ears are especially poor at higher frequencies.

The perception of higher frequencies goes first as you get older. There are quite a few online hearing tests that can help you determine if your hearing has diminished. I would not take them as a professional assessment, but they will provide a good indication and maybe a prompt to get a proper test. It could be that a modest hearing aid might be your most appropriate solution.

[culzean]

Maybe my ears are especially poor at higher frequencies.

The perception of higher frequencies goes first as you get older. There are quite a few online hearing tests that can help you determine if your hearing has diminished. I would not take them as a professional assessment, but they will provide a good indication and maybe a prompt to get a proper test. It could be that a modest hearing aid might be your most appropriate solution.

One thing I have noticed is that pretty much everyone I know who has had a hearing aid does not wear them very often.  The problem with hearing aids is that they amplify everything, both the stuff you want to hear and the background stuff.  I know they are supposed to be tuned to pick up frequencies of human speech etc,  and can seem like a dream come true in the relative tranquility of you own home ( when you can turn the radio or telly up as high as you like anyway ), but not so much in crowded or noisy places.  Ideally a hearing aid would be directional - like a little microphone on the end of your finger that you could point at the source of the sound eg. the person you are speaking too.   Those old ear trumpets had the right idea, but obviously need to be smaller.   Another thing is that unless the fitting of the hearing aid into the ear is checked regularly and kept tight the wearer can get positive feedback between speaker and microphone,  just like those horrible squealing noises we are all familiar with from concerts etc when the microphones get too close to speakers.

[Neil Ives]

I've recently explored having hearing aids. My wife and I constantly bicker about how loud the TV is. She gets mad when I keep asking her what they just said, (why must they have music playing when people are speaking?).Wifey is also not keen on subtitles.

My hearing problem is tinnitus. I have a constant hiss in my hearing. Most of the time I'm able to tune it out of my consciousness but at times of stress or if I just think about it, (like now), I can hear it.

I went to Boots, (the chemist's) to have a hearing test. Lower frequencies were good. High frequencies, not so good. I was persuaded to try a set of digital behind-the-ear aids. The cost was £2.5k. I decided to pay in monthly installments. The aids could be tweaked with an app on my tablet.

While wearing the aids I got very little improvement in speech quality when listening to the TV. I returned twice to the audiologist to try to improve the experience but in the end I told her that they were just not cost-effective and cancelled the credit agreement.

[langserve]

Maybe my ears are especially poor at higher frequencies.

The perception of higher frequencies goes first as you get older. There are quite a few online hearing tests that can help you determine if your hearing has diminished. I would not take them as a professional assessment, but they will provide a good indication and maybe a prompt to get a proper test. It could be that a modest hearing aid might be your most appropriate solution.

One thing I have noticed is that pretty much everyone I know who has had a hearing aid does not wear them very often.  The problem with hearing aids is that they amplify everything, both the stuff you want to hear and the background stuff.  I know they are supposed to be tuned to pick up frequencies of human speech etc,  and can seem like a dream come true in the relative tranquility of you own home ( when you can turn the radio or telly up as high as you like anyway ), but not so much in crowded or noisy places.  Ideally a hearing aid would be directional - like a little microphone on the end of your finger that you could point at the source of the sound eg. the person you are speaking too.   Those old ear trumpets had the right idea, but obviously need to be smaller.   Another thing is that unless the fitting of the hearing aid into the ear is checked regularly and kept tight the wearer can get positive feedback between speaker and microphone,  just like those horrible squealing noises we are all familiar with from concerts etc when the microphones get too close to speakers.

Interesting. Well, I did a couple of the tests online and they indicate my hearing is still fairly good. I've always been a bit of an audio buff so I suppose that's part of why I want to tweak the sound a little. I listen mainly to speech and find the volume has crept up a lot when I pull into a services after some motorway driving. Much less so in the GK than in the GD but still noticeable. I have just put winter tyres on as well and they are much noisier so perhaps I'm adjusting at the moment.

[embee]

One thing to bear in mind when doing a self-test is whether your audio equipment (especially if a laptop or phone) is actually capable of reproducing the signals. Just because you press play on a 10kHz tone track it doesn't mean the speaker actually produces the sound.
I have a fairly decent hi-fi kit and even on that a test CD with a frequency sweep shows up "hills and holes" in the output.

Sadly loss of sensitivity to higher frequencies as you get older is a fact of life. Young kids can hear well up into the teens of kHz, old fogies like me do very well to hear 10kHz, and 5kHz is very commonly about the limit. In reality you seldom really "need" much more than a couple of kHz, that's like a flute which has a typical 3 octave range from middle C (256Hz) to C7 (2096Hz)and will let you hear most speech etc well. Tinnitus is another issue to add insult to injury .........

A typical tweeter crossover frequency is around 3.5kHz, and you may well find an older person can't actually hear anything above this anyway, so extra tweeters may or may not be much use. What is probably more use is more mid range, 500-3k or so. According to google, adult male speech is fundamentally in the range 85-155Hz, and female 165-255Hz, generally fairly low comparatively, so anything above 500Hz is not likely to be very much help for those who have trouble hearing speech, although the higher frequencies will make it a bit "brighter" even if the hearing is poor above 1kHz.

[culzean]

On the sound settings of our TV at home is a graphic equaliser and a 'user' setting preset ( as well as the manufacturers selectable presets for 'speech', 'music' and 'cinema' etc. ) to alter the apparent 'loudness' of different frequency bands - I have boosted the higher frequencies and softened the lower ones - this has worked as it is easier to understand speech now when I use the 'user' setting.

[Lord Voltermore]

On most car forums a question about tweeters will be met with recommendation for mega watt amplifiers in the boot etc.      For the jazz - hearing aids.   

[Neil Ives]

On most car forums a question about tweeters will be met with recommendation for mega watt amplifiers in the boot etc.      For the jazz - hearing aids.   

Funny 

[langserve]

On most car forums a question about tweeters will be met with recommendation for mega watt amplifiers in the boot etc.      For the jazz - hearing aids.   

Yes! It certainly seems a certain demographic drives the Jazz in the UK. It wasn't like that here in the past, but it is becoming an older person's car bit by bit. I think the styling of the new model was an attempt to break away from that trend but they went over the top with the look of the front trying to appeal to young men. Sales have been disappointing, so I wouldn't at all be surprised to see a fairly radical facelift in the near future.