This is an attempt by the scientists to produce for normal hearing people a little sample of how people with cochlear implants hear so you’ll know what it’s like. So the CD arrives, and I gave it to Brian and said, “Put this thing in the CD player. I’m supposedly track such-and-such on setting such-and-such.” So Brian listened to it and said, “Well, all I hear is a bunch of distortion!”
I said, “That’s the point!” and had a good laugh. I had to ask if he thought that there was something wrong with the CD when he first heard it, or if he was commenting on it overall. He said that some of the CD tracks actually sound pretty good. That’s about all they can do, approximate it, because I can’t tell them, “Yeah, it sounds like that,” and they cannot hear as I do because they don’t have implants.
I’ve asked Brian and others who hear the CD to think of something that they’ve heard that sounds like the track matching my hearing. We’re also going to try to get some cuts of the sound up here at
When I came back, I said that things sounded like a microcassette recorder. I hissed and described the tape hiss. Apparently, this CD track is like me hearing what I sound like to myself, only reproduced by a doctor on an estimate basis. I listened to the CD myself, but I don’t know what they would sound like to someone with normal hearing. Anyway, I guess it’s pretty close if the reaction is distortion.