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Do you know anyone who has lots part of their hearing due to listening to music too loud? What steps do you take to prevent this from happening to YOU?
Yep. Me. Too many years of listening to very high dB music, both from hi-fi and being in a band. Being young you just don't think of using earplugs when playing live rock music. I've noticed that I now have occasional problems understanding people, depending on the pitch of their voice. Someone behind me talking to me is the worst. If there are other sounds in the room, TV or whatever, I can sometimes have trouble understanding people. I've learned to nod a lot Not much I can do now except don't listen loud anymore and look forward to hearing aides.
Like Shane hinted at, I think it takes being in a band that maxes out 150watt equipment to really do it. With commercial stereo recordings, i've endured up to 120db for long periods with no loss I can detect either through testing with a frequency generator or noticing anything. Protecting yourself from environmental noise is the best way to protect your hearing. Roll up the car windows, which accounts for almost all left ear hearing loss here in the US. True enough to form they have the same problem on the right ear in England, for example. If your ears don't ring after a half an hour, you have nothing to worry about at all. 90db is pretty loud. that being median volume is fine really. I am certainly not afraid of it peaking at 110-120db at all. All I do is wear earplugs at band practice and nothing at all on my home stereo. I crank it up and have never had trouble with the tower speakers. Reference headphones are another story since the peaks and the average volume are pretty close together due to having a single driver per channel, as opposed to being three-way. Some people have a low tolerance for ear pain like me, so I typically never get anything loud enough for my own enjoyment to damage my ears, again, headphones ring my ears just a little after many hours. It's just not fun to me to blare music. I go for a realistic SPL. I can tolerate a lot of noise in a band situation though because of the fidelity being 100%. I'm not someone that is bothered by lows vibrating cell tissue though. I enjoy the feeling of music conducting through my bones and everything. I sing at over 100db, so there's not much I can do about that
I forgot the most critical point. Harmonic distortion and incomplete waveforms is 99% of the problem with music. A clean signal no matter how strong is usually going to be fine. A cheap ghetto blaster at 90db is going to hurt later. If anyone's ever played with a bassist in a fairly small room, you know exactly what I mean by distortion. The waveforms aren't being drawn to complete compressions and rarefactions. Since our ears are delicate and very dynamic, a very loud signal that rises and falls properly, even at a deafening level is going to be very tolerable.
Agreed about the bass player. We had a bass player, drummer (double bass rig with 4 toms, 2 floor toms, rototoms, the whole nine yards--he's my brother!!!), two guitarists, and a singer practicing in a 15" x 15' room. You can imagine!!! Twice a week, 4 hours at a shot, for 5 years, then gigs most every Sat. night. Ugggg.... I do miss it though. We changed guitarists and singer the last year and worked up about 20 originals to record when at the last minute 3 of us got transferred in our day jobs. That really bit.
I feel very frustrated when I see young kids with their iPods and the music is so loud that I hear clearly across the room. I know how important hearing is, and I see them throwing it down the drain.