I can’t help wondering how many people have ever stopped to think about what they cannot hear.
At Harmonix, I’ve worked with buyers all over the world. Audio buyers, people who genuinely love sound. People who know specs, codecs, drivers, margins, markets. But there’s one thing that quietly unites so many of them — and it’s something I never once thought about:
None of us really know what we’re missing.
I grew up in a house where music mattered. My dad had a proper record collection, he had home edited cassette tapes with recordings from the radio from the Charts. A separates HiFi with big floor-standing speakers that felt like furniture and sounded like theatre.
Now in his 70’s he doesn’t really listen anymore. And the more I look back, the more I realise it probably started in his 50s. Not dramatically. Not overnight, just gradually, but has music maybe lost its sparkle. The effort quietly outweighed the joy. Meanwhile, my generation moved through Walkmans, Discman, early iPods — earbuds everywhere, volume creeping up, life getting louder.
And now here I am, the wrong side of 50, am I going to stop listening to music? Not if I can help it, so last year, before heading out on some initial sales calls that I wanted to find a way to interactively demo this to buyers. Which is when I stumbled across this slightly brilliant educational website:
https://www.echalk.co.uk/Science/biology/hearing/HowOldIsYourHearing/resource.html
It’s designed for kids. The idea is simple — they can hear high frequencies that their teachers can’t. It’s a bit of classroom fun.
But try it yourself.
It’s oddly humbling.
There’s something about pressing play and waiting… and waiting… and realising the silence isn’t silence at all — it’s just your ears drawing a line.
It’s not scientific. It’s not a diagnosis. But it does something important.
It makes you aware.
At 52, I don’t feel old. I still love great audio. I still care about clarity. But I’m far more conscious now that hearing loss isn’t a switch. It’s a slow fade. And unless you look for it, you don’t notice it happening.
So here’s a genuine question:
Have you ever actually checked what you can’t hear?
Because maybe that’s the most important part.