Super hearing

What do you guys think is up with the girls' hearing? How can Henrietta hear across a room and not go deaf from shooting guns.

She might be able to adjust the sensitivity.

I concur. It's likely that the girls utilize some form of internal "hearing-aide" type device that allows them to adjust their auditory sensitivity. Their own personal volume control, if you will.

Claes: "I wish I could dial mine down to off when Henrietta is yapping on about gelato and her handler."

Or at the very least give her FM reception so she can listen to something else while 'Etta is chattering away.

Ears with safeguards against very loud noises would explain why the girls can shoot without hearing protection while their handlers must use earmuffs.

Yeah. I'm thinking they may have a limit to how many DBs they can register, so very loud, sharp sounds like a gunshot or explosion would be attenuated.

Many types of electronic ear protection have a setting which automatically defaults noise to a set dB level. So a quiet step in the background is amplified to that of conversation, and a gunshot is quieted down till it doesn't damage your ears. These things are only ear-bud sized, so it's perfectly possible that they could be used in a cyborg quite easily.

Which... would make a lot more sense than somehow adjusting the volume of something inside your own head, IMHO.

I wonder if the cyborg's individual rooms are sound proofed, so that certain 'adult' comments might not cause undue um, confusion....
Hilshire: Petra's got a real toosh on her, right mein freund?
Jose: yeah, I wouldn't mind tapping that.
Henrietta, Hi Jose, would you like to 'tap' my 'toosh'?
Jose: Ahhh! N-no, um, Toosh 'n' Tap is a famous Russian duh-dance she does! Right Hilshire?
Hilshire: Tooshen ze Tappin' ya!
Henrietta: I smell a fib.....

I'm surprised, and perhaps a bit shocked, that I didn't think about the "electronic muffs" style of hearing when I was writing "Light". It seems like something I would have thought of. :(

Though I suppose that if Jamie's hearing is so much more refined and sensitive than a Gen-One, it's still possible that she could be having trouble with it enough to require earplugs. Oh well...

The flexibility may not be in the actual ear hardware, but in the thresholds the brain accepts...a regulator in the microcircuitry that processes inputs.



One wonders how cats do it. I've seen a cat pick out a mouse in a woodpile from 50 feet away then fall asleep in my lap with Megadeth on the speakers, turned up to 11.

Also realize, there's mechanical earplugs available today. The chambers will automatically block sound if it's over a certain threshold. I'd imagine that could be more reliable than an electronic design in a cyborg, potentially.

John_234 wrote:Also realize, there's mechanical earplugs available today. The chambers will automatically block sound if it's over a certain threshold. I'd imagine that could be more reliable than an electronic design in a cyborg, potentially.

Mechanical earplugs have been around since the late 1970s.

Electronically, any sound coming in over any selected decibel (65db seems reasonable, since that is quite loud) can be cut off from the hearing circuit. But certain frequencies and volumes can bypass the hearing device and go into the brain via bone conduction.

Hence the use of headphones for construction and shooting, I'd assume. I had to do some hearing tests and having a noise inside you head but not through your ears is pretty bizarre.