philosophy question: If one is deaf in one ear....

[pocoloco]

how much would one benifit from new headphones or... speakers for that matter?

I just had a bit of an ephinay/lighbulb moment; dad wants to buy me headphones for christmas but I'm deaf in my right ear so how much of a difference will audiophile equipment make. Ive been half deaf since I was born :eek: what have I been missing out on :( have I been listening to monaural grade sound this whole time or has my left ear been doing the work of two?

[LHH]

Well, if you are deaf in one ear you will not be able to create a stereo image when a sound has a single source point. And unless you have a headphone amplifier with a balance control you will be missing out on half the music when listening with headphones (though not with speakers).

However, that doesn't mean that you will not benefit from better headphones or speakers. You will still hear greater detail, clarity, naturalness, impact, accuracy, body (etc. etc.) with better equipment. It's just that you'll only hear that in one ear, but that's no big deal, I often listen music while lying on the bed with one ear on a pillow -- I still enjoy it, and I enjoy it more when I'm listening to good gear than when I'm listening to rubbish gear.

[Owen Young]

WARNING: Philosophy ahead...

That said, there are those (audiophiles) who favour listening to good mono recordings & find that mono recordings have a veracity of 'thereness' that 2-spkr 'stereo' does not.

Bob Carver in this interview (http://twit.tv/show/home-theater-geeks/29) explains why... ie. 2 lspkrs cannot produce clear 3D imaging very well (FFwd to 29:10).

So, 'stereo' as we know it may be over-hyped, or at least we may be trying to get it to do what it cannot technically ever do very well...ie. create clear, solid sound images.

I would however endorse the idea of a balance control.

[pocoloco]

would the average pc audio software suffice? I know I can set the balance for left and right channels in windows 7.

[Luis]

Brian Wilson is almost deaf in 1 ear since childhood. Doesn't seem to have hampered him too much musically. The brain is pretty good at compensating for these sorts of things. Good sound is good sound, whether it's quad, stereo or mono.

[Luis]

would the average pc audio software suffice? I know I can set the balance for left and right channels in windows 7.

I would think it's better to be able to set the sound to mono, than have balance control, which can give you an incomplete sound spectrum.