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Is the iPod Generation Going Deaf?
prozac79 writes "Ars Technica and Wired News are both running interesting articles on how personal music players are a major contributor [ArsTechnica] to early hearing loss [Wired]. According the ArsTechnica article, an increasing number of people are now living in "noisy" environments that is only made worse by blocking it out with even louder music. The article also suggests that listening to music for one hour a day is considered safe. So now you have a choice... go deaf early or go insane listening to your coworkers chatter."
I have a pair of Bose Quietcomfort headphones, and I wonder if the noise cancelling is actually damaging my hearing. What do you think?
Is the Walkman Generation Going Deaf?
US News and World Report and Newsweek are both running interesting articles on how personal tape players are a major contributor [US News] to early hearing loss [Newsweek]. According the US News article, an increasing number of people are now living in "noisy" environments that is only made worse by blocking it out with even louder music. The article also suggests that listening to music for one hour a day is considered safe. So now you have a choice... go deaf early or go insane listening to your coworkers chatter."
Nothing new hear, we've been getting this since at least 1980. There are likely stories about how the photograph, motion picture "talkie", transister radio and lord knows whatelse cause problems.
Uhm... yes? If I can hear the music clearly from your earbuds across the room, your "coolness factor" (apparently consisting of making sure everyone can hear your really loud rap music) will not prevent hearing damage. I say let 'em. Common sense will prevail for the rest of us.
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I find, when walking down the street - that I've got my iPod's volume up to the highest level. It's not because I really like the song, and want to hear it really loudly, but rather, I can't hear it if I turn it down at all. Simply because of the passing traffic is so noisy.
Had I kept the iPod down to a lower level, say at 0.75 or 0.5 - then I simply wouldn't be able to hear it - so, perhaps the problem is not the music players, but rather, an increase in noise from other locations? For example, traffic?
Is the world itself getting noisier?
go deaf early or go insane listening to your coworkers chatter.
Or wear ear plugs.
It'll be difficult for some people to stop wearing headsets. You get used to the "company", and become a bit nervous when there's silence.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Deafness is a useful adaption to the modern working environment. A touch of deafness blocks out the computer fans, the traffic noise, the endless airplanes flying overhead, the neighbour's kids, and the wife. The only problem is that it takes more and more volume to produce that "oh, yeah!"effect when listening to music. But that's someone else's problem.
Personally, I went partly deaf at the age of 16 from spending too much time on a firing range. But most of my peers went similarly deaf not from the iPod, but from the Sony Walkman.
This story is about 25 years too late. I guess each generation reinvents the "we went deaf because..." story.
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They block outside noise by 23db, so you don't have to turn the music up to drown out the noise. I sometimes leave them in even without listening to music. They are nearly as good as a pair of headphone style hearing protectors.
http://www.etymotic.com/
Didn't I read this same story about Walkman's 20 years ago? And didn't they decide the effects were negligable? Oh yeah I did. Abstract from a study in 1987: Krahenbuhl D, Arnold W, Fried R, Chuden H. Investigations on 50 high school students showed that this group had been using the "Walkman" only 1.5 h. per day during the last 14 months. A comparison of the audiometric results obtained with these 50 "Walkman" users, with those of 20 age-related non-"Walkman" users, showed no statistically significant differences. The investigation further revealed that to avoid hearing loss, an upper threshold level of 93 dB (A) should not be exceeded for a daily "Walkman" user time of two hours. PMID: 3613781 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Seriously: I was born 1969 and clearly are part of the walkman generation, using one (OK, cheap copycats) from the mid 80s till the early 90s. Then I exposed my ears to techno parties :-P
Whenever they check my hearing at the doctor or hospital they are surprised how good I hear considered my age.
So let me say:
Bah.
It's not just mp3 players, it's car stereos (especially the 1000+ watt "boom cars") and loud exhausts. Some of the cars on the streets in my town can produce sound pressures that are actually painful -- from a distance of ten feet, in another car, with the windows up!!
Even base stereo systems these days are 60+ watts. That's enough to cause substantial hearing loss in a matter of weeks if listened to repeatedly, for an hour or more per day.
I can't even imagine how profound the boomcar boyz hearing loss must be. Not that I care... karma and all that.
Ever attended a rock concert? It's a near certainty that you did permanent damage toyour high frequency hearing.
Bring lawn tools into the equation (leaf blowers, lawn mowers, chainsaws, etc.) and that == more hearing loss.
However, it's not just the under-thirty crowd. Many of our fathers served time in the military, when hearing protection meant sticking your finger in your ear before the guy next to you threw a grenade or fired a 30.06. Hearing loss didn't mean shit when your biggest concern was not being shot on a beach landing. The difference is the genX'ers are *choosing* to damage their hearing.
Noise cancelling headphones if correctly implemented are rather more complex than just inserting an inverted signal. For the record, I am deaf (artillery and large engines, as if you care) and because of the strange hole in my hearing response I use a digital hearing aid. The configuration screen for programming this runs to a number of pages, and I can have it set to include or exclude things like refrigerator and fan noise. In fact, I have one program that does optimised noise cancelling to get the best speech response, and another that does no noise cancelling which is useful for music and for checking that things like HDDs are making the right noises.
Noise cancelling technology is already used in professional telephone headsets, and I am surprised that it is missing from iPods and the like. It would be easy enough to have a button which switched between cancelling and not cancelling external noise sources and which, like my hearing aid, has a setting which allows through a sudden loud noise when in N/C mode, as a safety factor in traffic. This would mean the ability to listen at lower volume levels in noisy conditions.
I have a local inductive loopset (one of the few good things to come out of Nokia in my view) which allows me to use the cell phone and to inject another sound source. With the hearing aid switched to inductive pickup only, and to block external sound, I can make a phone call in noisy conditions without difficulty.
Conclusion: the technology exists to fix these problems and enable people to listen at lower volumes, manufacturers just can't be bothered.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Noise cancelling or isolating headphones.
Etymotic, Shure and Koss all make noise isolating headphones, which are generally cheaper and have higher quality sound than noise cancelling gimmicks like the Bose headsets.
Basically, you put in a set of these ear-canal plugs, you hear nothing but the music, and therefore can listen to your music at far lower levels in noisy environments than you would be able to with normal open or closed can style headphones.
The isolation from the Etymotic ER-4p/s for example, is 44 decibels, which is phenomenal. I own a pair of Er-4ps myself, and have used them a lot while travelling, and have to say that spending 300 euro on a set of headphones does not look like a waste of cash once you get up to 30,000 feet in a packed Airbus.
The isolation is so complete that it's shocking to hear the noise levels that everyone else is being exposed to once you pull the headphones out after a period of use.
Not to mention the fantastic sound quality.
I've been thinking about this for years, in a minor way off and on, and I'm still waiting for someone to invent a good feedback system for hearing level. If the music can be heard clearly at 80-85db, thenit is probably safe, right? However, all the studies I've seen measure db in the environment, not the energy approaching the ear. And if you're wearing earphones, how do you prevent hearing loss when you don't know what you are delivering to your ear?
Reactive noise-cancelling earphones would seem to be a good idea, especially if they can reduce the ambient noise to 50 or 60db and alow music to be heard at less than 85db. In fact, without music, I would be relieved sometimes to have noise-cancelling headphones to simply provide some near-silence. It would be a worthy project for competent technicians to come up with an inexpensive (less than $20) noise-cancelling headphone with signal contrast (outside noise less than 50db to inside noise less than 85db), easy equalization, and galvanic skin response sensors to indicate when the music was causing discomfort. (GSR might not be sufficient. Many recent studies showed that the type of music listened to can produce a variety of emotional and chemical responses ranging from peaceful, healthy, joyful to irritated, angry and unhealthy. Here's a a different question: If you knew loud rap and metallic rock were as bad for your system over the long run as cigarettes, would you quit listening to it?) An article written in layman's terms with good references can be found here: http://www.headwize.com/articles/hearing_art.htm.
Although the general consensus is that much hearing loss is irrepairable, I have heard rumors of people recovering some hearing ability by listening to specific music. (I think I first saw this in a book called "Superlearning 2000", and have heard subjective reports since then, but I haven't noticed any scientific papers.) Also, if high-frequency loss is a problem to you, I've heard good things about Echophone.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
This has nothing to do with BOSE being mainstream and hating it therefore becoming chic and everything to do with the fact that consumer-level BOSE equipment really is crap.
Am I the only one who heard Roxette to sing "I'm gonna get blitzed for some sex"?
You do not want to exceed 95 dB, ever: EVER!
Take it from a deaf person whose hearing loss is averaged as 64 dB at 20Hz down to 95 @ 8 KHz. That is the surveyed threshold for a lifelong usage of a hearing aid without losing ones remaining hearing (thus rendering such hearing useless).
Hearings is not recoverable as the many tiny cilia hair nerves gets shortened at greater than 95 dB due to excessive POUNDING of the noise whipping these reed-like cilia back and forth (tearing or cutting off blood flows) as amplified by your middle ear bones and outer ear's ear drum.
Protect your ears, take it from a deaf person. It is career threatening in your mid-life. No need to get another cow during your mid-life crisis.
Cholear implant (CI) is a proven technology, but a bothersome hinderance to those late-deafened teens and adult as they did not grow up accustomed to these CI outfits. (Doable, but takes longer to get accustomed to these CI). CI is not a perfect replacement as you would get 32 channels (more later) spread across the sound spectrum but with GAPS in between. Computer/signal processors back-fills in these inter-channel gaps (not pleasant to a true classic music afficiandos).
Keep it down... It might save your life.
Don't get hit by a bus because you're IPODing. (interesting tidbits: 422 deaf people were killed by bus.)
Nice try, but this doesn't apply to Bose. Their good reputation stems entirely from marketing. In fact, their products are mediocre at best, certainly not 'pretty good'.
Bose tends to market their products using technobabble that impresses the mainstream consumer, but is absolutely ludicrous to anyone with a modicum of knowledge of acoustics. Their 'surround with 2/3 speakers' claims are a good example: it doesn't bloody work!
Try comparing Bose products to equipment that costs the same, but is produced without the technobabble influence. Mainstream stuff will do, nothing exotic is necessary. The Bose stuff won't sound better.
I did this once with a set of Bose 301 speakers versus a set of Magnat Concept 2 speakers (about $100/pair cheaper than the Bose set). The Magnats had a much more linear frequency response, the Bose really emphasized the midrange frequencies too much. The Bose's direct/reflecting system made them sound unfocused: close your eyes and you've no idea where the sound comes from. With a good system, you should be able to point out where the instruments are - can't do this with the Bose, piece of cake with the Magnats.
Also the Magnats were far less fatiguing to listen to (side effect of the flat frequency response).
Bose tends to market their products using technobabble that impresses the mainstream consumer, but is absolutely ludicrous to anyone with a modicum of knowledge of acoustics.
As opposed to "audoiphile" marketers using sciencebabble that impresses the audiophile consumer, but is absolutely ludicrous to anyone with a modicum of knowledge of physics.
I have mild hearing damage in my left ear, unrelated to headphones. In my case, it has to do with years of practicing the violin without an earplug in my left ear (which is most vulnerable to damage in violinists).
:)
Nevertheless, I think the iPod generation is in luck, because they are also one of the first generations where genetic therapy is not purely science fiction. In the past couple of years, researchers discovered that the production of a protein (Rb1) was responsible for the behaviour shared by the inner ear hair cells of all mammals, or more to the point... the reason the hair cells do not divide and hearing does not regenerate. Recently scientists discovered the gene that was responsible for producing this protein in mice. Given 5 to 10 years, I am optimistic the naive iPod generation, senior citizens and even I will be eligible for gene therapy to reverse the effects of hearing loss.
It is important to protect your hearing, but damage is inevitable no matter how careful you are. Luckily, for musicians and the ignorant iPod generation, there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon
Both of these responses are exactly the things that XYZ-philes always say.
That doesn't make them untrue. This isn't painting-the-edges-of-a-CD audiophile nonsense, it's verifiable through simple means.
That 'niche at the upper end of the mainstream' is occupied by companies like Denon, Onkyo and Marantz, not Bose.
Have you ever tried comparing a Bose system with anything else? You know, actually do listening tests?
Have you ever tried comparing a Bose system with anything else? You know, actually do listening tests?
I have. I worked in the Audio department for about a year at Best Buy.
For starters, bose dictated sale prices to best buy - best buy couldn't just choose to put them on sale; they had to put them on sale when Bose corporate said to, which is why the circulars always said "All Speakers Onsale*" *except bose.
And the no highs, no lows, must be Bose does hold true. I am by no means an audiophile, but even my damn-near deaf due to rock concerts ears can tell they suck. I mean, the 201's and 301's aren't terrible speakers, but they are a bit muddy and much more expensive than, say, a pair of JBL bookshelfs that sound better.
The crux of the matter is the Lifestyles systems, though. The bass tube with the little cubes? Ugh. You're not going to get good bass out of a 6.5" woofer, especially if it's the unpowered one. If you do a sound sweep from like 50 hz to 50 khz, you're going to hear huge dropoff points all over the place. They just sound bad. Which would be acceptable for consumer electronics, if they were cheap, but they're upwards of $1000! The one with the dual cubes and the powered sub was $1300 when I worked there, and I bet it hasn't gotten cheaper. Give me $1300, and I'll get you some relatively inexpensive Sony tower speakers for front and rear, and a JBL center channel and 10" sub, and give you $400 back, and it'll sound vastly better (just going off of the brands that were there when I worked there). I know that sony and JBL aren't excellent names in home theater, but jesus, they're a far cry better than Bose.
It's not an audiophile thing. It's a listen to it and say ugh thing.
~Will
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