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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.
Actually in most European Countries the Taxpayer will pay for your disability. So it is in the interest of everybody to protect dumbasses from themselfs Just my 2 cents
How much money was spent in the House of Reps. and Senate debating, drafting, and approving this bill?
Since the law is European, my guess would be $0.00.
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.
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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)
Otherwise known as circumaural headphones, and not even all of those will help you. You need to seek out closed headphones, which are usually either circumaural or intra-aural (earbuds). If you're in a quiet environment, closed circumaurals don't sound as nice as open circumaurals, because in closed ones the sound is vibrating around in whatever material is keeping the sound out/in, but in some cases they're necessary, such as loud rooms or rooms with other people. Just don't think that because you're buying a big pair of headphones that completely engulfs your ear that you're going to have isolation from the outside world or that the world won't be able to hear what you're listening to.
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
"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
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...
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 ! :)
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
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.
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