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Remove iPod European Volume Cap
bsodmike writes "This is a complete how-to for removing the EU Cap in the new iPods allowing 104dB bliss! Thanks to everyone @ #eucap including UnixMonkey, Keaner, Silvacow, m@rk et al." Some countries have an upper limit of 100dB for consumer devices, so the European version of the iPod is "crippled."
If you listen to your iPod at 100+ dB for a prolonged period of time, you might find yourself with hearing loss. Broken iPods can be fixed or replaced, but unfortunately your eardrums are permanent, and non replaceable.
Is that a real poncho? I mean, is that a Mexican poncho or is that a Sears poncho?
Why the fuck do people bother with that crap? Do they really think that they have cunningly found a legal loophole that every lawyer in the world has missed? Do they not realise that if they trotted out that defence in any court in the world the judge would just laugh at them?
Gah.
An increase of 3dB is equivalent to doubling the power output. 4dB is quite significant.
It said "140db" cap! Hot damn! If it did that, I'd buy 2 for my car and drive around like a hoodlem.
Seriously, who thought that people needed to be protected from a portable music player? How much money was spent in the House of Reps. and Senate debating, drafting, and approving this bill? If you want to make a device that plays 125dB through headphones, fine. If people want to listen to it at that level, fine. If a year from now, that person is deaf, too bad. Don't listen to music that loud, dumbass. Can't we just get to government to quit trying to protect us from ourselves?
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
It's not just European units. It seems to be all iPods outside of the United States.
I know that personally, my first generation 10GB model iPod was volume dropped, and I'm in Australia.
will be branded assholes.
Think you are being polite wearing earphones in a computer lab or library? Think no one can hear you? You are wrong!!!
Only those full-size aircraft-or-studio-style headsets can attenuate the sound enough for other people to be oblivious to the crap-rap within.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
This has nothing to do with DRM, the DCMA, or whatever the hell you think you're talking about. Not everything defined limit on technology in the world is.
e n/ artikel.asp?lngCategoryId=1312&lngArticleId=26 33
In fact, this is legislation that defines appropriate maximum volumes for noise-emitting consumer devices in public or workplace areas in different countries in the EU.
http://www.econsumer.konsumentverket.se/mallar/
It's a little different than being told by some protecting-its-assets company what you can and can't do with the product you bought (like Microsoft stepping on Xbox modding, and using the widely abused DMCA to do it). If you use a stereo in public in some EU countries, and you crank it up over 100dB, you are breaking the law. They don't really care about your possessions and what you want to do with it, and they have no reason to.
I LOVE this, actually, and wish they'd implement it where I live (Virginia). I'm trying to watch a movie in my house, for example, with my girlfriend, and we want to sit and enjoy the movie. We DON'T want some asshat sitting at the stop light with his BIG FAT SPEAKERS going insane and making our drinks ripple from a hundred feet away.
Do a little reading next time, please.
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
This will increase the amount of sound reaching your ears by 4dB.
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)
Before everyone starts going off on 104db being too loud for people to listen to without hearing loss (oops, too slow everybodys started already), people might like to consider a totally valid reason for this patch: the SPL of 104db is only generated when utilising the supplied headphones with the iPOD. If you choose to use better quality yet less sensitive headphones then you will need a higher output to generate the same SPL. However, you are not currently permitted by the powers that be to do this. Also, some people may be listening to non-normalised sound files which have an average volume considerably lower than your average normalised recording. The peaks in non-normalised recordings will be much more likely to be transients which are much less likely to cause problems, but are you "permitted" to raise the average output level up to a reasonable level? I think not...
The only Good System is a Sound System
Not really, 4 orders of magnitude is increasing it a thousand times (10^4).
"bels" are factors of 10, whic most people mean when they speak of orders of magnitude. decibels are one-tenth of a bel, hence the prefix. 4 dB is 4/10 of a factor of 10, or something like a factor of 2.5.
1 dB is is a factor of 1.26, i.e. a 25% increase.
Further complicating the situation is that most people don't listen to their music with an acoustic power meter. Psychoacoustically, there is a non-linear relationship between perceived loudness and acoustic power. The commonly quoted "10 dB is twice as loud" is not an exact relationship, but is rather close at low sound levels.
...than your hearing! We're all used to thinking of ourselves as immortal, especially when we are young. When I was a teenager I used to listen to a Sony walkman fully crankin'. Now I have well over a decade of suffeing with tinnitus. Anything over 90db is damaging to the ear. One hearing specialist said that listening to headphones is akin to jamming a pair of firehoses into both ears and turning the water on full blast in terms of the damage it'll do to your hearing. It may sound like hyperbole, but it probably isn't that far from the truth!
Tinnitus can cause depression, sleeplessness and a host of other psychic and physical maladies. From a personal perspective, if you hear a loud noise that annoys the hell out of you you have two choices. 1)Walk out of the room where you hear the offending noise 2) Turn the sound down! If you have tinnitus, you can't do either of those things. You just have to live with it. There is no cure and by the time you realize that the ringing in your ears isn't going away that's about it. You will hear that sound for the rest of your life! Unless, of course nanomedicine can provide a cure, but don't hold your breath or hang your hopes on that one!
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
104 dB is (10^0.4) = 2.51188643150958 times louder than 100 dB.
2B = 10 times louder than 1B
2dB = 10^0.1 times louder than 1dB
got it?
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Anyone remember the Sup 'R' Mod, the little RF modulator that cost, IIRC, $29.95 and allowed you to use your Apple ][ with an ordinary television receiver instead of a monitor? In those days, a dinky little green-screen monitor cost $150 or so, and few people invested in color monitors. All Apple stores carried them, they were as automatic a part of the sale as the camera store selling you a roll of film with your new camera.
The supposed story is that this was the actual modulator Apple had PLANNED to build into every Apple ][, but this was about the time the new FCC regs came into effect and, with the modulator, it didn't meet them. So they quickly set up a deal with the company that became Sup 'R' Mod. It was illegal for Apple to sell an Apple ][ with the modulator IN it, but perfectly OK for a company to sell the modulator by itself, and OK for an end user to PUT the modulator in.
I remember thinking at the time that the modulator fit so nicely and installed so easily, almost as if it were MADE to go there.
OK, mod this down as off-topic... it would only be a good parallel (and hence on-topic) if Apple had assisted with and winked at the defeat of the volume limitation, and I don't think they did.
Except that they aren't.
Eardrum repair is actually fairly common, and I'd know. I currently sport a 31-year old eardrum and a 7-month old eardrum. And before anyone goes off about it being the Tympanic bones that get damaged, rather than the drum itself, they can give you prostetic bones, as well.
I tried to talk my Dr. into giving me bionic bones/membranes, but he wasn't too into the idea.
A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself.
It's not your eardrums that are damaged, but the cilia in your cochlea. These are fine hairs that are vibrated as sound waves travel past them, and stimulate the nerves to which they are attached.
These hairs do not recover from damage. Once the hair is killed, you have lost the ability to hear the frequency that hair was "tuned" for.
You will experience permanent, irreversible hearing damage at 104dB within five minutes.
Decibel Exposure Time Guidelines
Accepted standards for recommended permissible exposure time for continuous time weighted average noise, according to NIOSH and CDC, 2002. For every 3 dBs over 85dB, the permissible exposure time before possible damage can occur is cut in half.
Continuous dB Permissible Exposure Time
85 db 8 hours
88 dB 4 hours
91 db 2 hours
94 db 1 hour
97 db 30 minutes
100 db 15 minutes
103 db 7.5 minutes
106 dB 3.75 min (< 4min)
109 dB 1.875 min (< 2min)
112 dB .9375 min (about 1 min)
115 dB .46875 min (about 30 sec)
Don't fuck with loud sounds. It's just not worth it.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
These hairs do not recover from damage.
Are you saying loud music is a major cause of baldness?
Mom: "That there rock noise is evil and will make you sick!"
Shoulda listened Mom...
I cranked my pc's sound up to 104dBs and then turned on text-to-speech. Now all I hear is the piercing sound of CmdrTaco telling me that I'm an insensitive clod and the neighbors have called the cops! Thanks, thanks a lot guys.
IIRC, Apple did this because France complained about the 104dB Max volume. iPod sale was banned in France for a short while over this. Blame the French ! :)
You set your player to volume X. At that volume a soft note is barely audible, where as a loud note is somewhat audible. You turn the volume to 104db. The loud note causes bleeding. The soft note is now quite audible.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Does that mean I will be deaf in 316,452 years even if I only listen to absolute silence? =)
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
You just made my point for me. Yeesh why'd it take so long.
When you turn up the volume to "YES I CAN MAKE A 104db sound" level, the soft notes will not be 104db. Therefore that will not damage your ears.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
No, statistically, you will probably become permanently deaf around 78 years of age.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
This assumes, of course, that they're talking about 100+ dB of sound pressure (SPL).
But that's completely ludicrous. The SPL levels are a function of the speaker/headphone design and proximity to your ears in addition to the power output of the amplifier.
A dB is a unit of ratio between a given level (power, pressure, whatever) and a reference level.
In this particular case, they're probably talking about dBu or dBV or dBm or some other ratio involving output voltage/power levels.
104dBu is not the same as 104dBV which is not the same as 104dBm. Either one can translate into high SPL levels, low SPL levels, or anything in between, depending on what kind of speakers, headphones or other amplifiers are attached.
According to Apple the iPod can put out up to 30mw of RMS power per channel. This is about 29 dBm (20 log(30) ),so it's obviously not what the original article is talking about.
I'm actually rather curious now to know what that unqualified "104 dB" figure is referring to, since every different brand/model of headphones you use will have a different SPL for any given power level.
How absurd.
The iPod does not get that loud... or, at least mine never will. The loudness has to do with the size of the earphones, and if you use regular sized earphones with your iPod you find that the current it provides isn't enough to drive the larger magnets at a high volume.
Thus, my problem is more often that he iPod is too quiet, not too loud, especially in noisy environments.
This is just another example of the idiot state deciding it knows what's best for people and ignoring not only the fact people should have human rights (like self determination) but also the laws of physics!
The loudness of a device without builtin speakers is dependant on the size of the speakers its asked to drive! In this case, even my unrestricted US iPod is too quiet with my prefered headphones.
Government is a disease masquarading as its own cure.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
Yeah bionic hearing is cool and all, but it sucks having to hear "doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo" every time you try to listen to something.
- Steve Austin
Well, this is the method apparently:
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Solution to the EU Volume Limitation!
E.U. iPod sound limitation here's the solution
OK guys, here's the ultimate solution to your European iPod sound limitation problem. It worked sweetly on mine, only 5 minutes ago.
Go to TinkerTool (a small utility u can download at download.com) and tell it to display hidden files and folders.
Double click the iPod icon on the desktop.
Go to folder (iPod_control->device)
There you'll find a file named "Limit".
Send it to trash, and empty trash.
Unmount the iPod and voila, no more worries. Just watch for your ears coz now you'll get the maximum ur baby can give.
Nope, the loud music just wrecks your hearing.
Your brain must've been pre-fucked.
That was classic intercourse!
They likely are talking about dB SPL. Remember, pressure is force divided by area, and pressure is scaler. The headphone speaker diaphragm puts out a force. When you hold the headphone out in the open air, that force is divided by an (effectively) infinite area, and the resulting SPL is very low.
But when you put that speaker diaphragm into your ear, the total interior area of your ear canal is very small. Divide the diaphragm force by the small ear canal area, and you have a large pressure. Voila! High SPL.
Have you ever seen an acoustic calibrator or pistonphone? This is exactly how those devices work. They usually output 94 dB or 114 dB SPL. If you listen to them in the open air, you barely hear the signal, but if you put them against your ear, you could blow an eardrum.
> Don't fuck with loud sounds. It's just not worth it.
I have to disagree.
Fucking with loud sounds is so much better than doing it silently.