Slashdot Mirror
iPod Update to Address Volume-Level Concerns
aardwolf64 writes "In an apparent response to the hearing loss lawsuit against Apple, the company has released an update to the iPod nano and 5th generation iPod that allows the user to set the maximum volume level. Parents can even set a lock code that prevents the volume from going above a certain amount." Apple also has instructions at their site on how to implement the changes
If my 12 year old brother had an iPod I would definatley use this on his. I wish his cd player had one. He doesn't understand so constantly turns it WAAAYYY up. Loud enough that I can hear everything he is listening too perfectly. Don't get me wrong I'm 21 so I like loud music however I almost never turn my ipod up over halfway when I'm listening to the headphones.
The best thing is to educate yourself on the dangers of loud music (heck, ANY loud ambient noise can be dangerous as well). I'm from an older generation and did some permanent damage to my hearing with a string of Sony Walkman players and car stereos.
This just lets you set the maximum volume setting. But if there's some maximum volume setting you don't want to exceed, just don't set the volume higher. The real issue, in my opinion, is that you're likely to have tracks that have different average volumes, and if you play a quiet track, you'll turn it up, and then the next loud track damages your hearing. Using this feature to limit it, you play a quiet track, and you can't hear it. Or you adjust the maximum while playing a medium-volume track, and the loud tracks damage your hearing anyway. What they need is something to calculate RMS volume levels and automatically adjust the volume to even out tracks and limit the loudness of the output independant of the input.
It is possible to die from drinking too much water.
You Can Drink Too Much Water
Water intoxication is a problem not only among athletes. For instance, it has become one of the most common causes of serious heat illness in the Grand Canyon. Some people hiking the canyon drink large amounts of water and do not eat enough food to provide for electrolyte (salt, potassium) replacement and energy. Fears of dehydration has led to a mistaken belief that the safe thing to do is to drink as much and as often as possible. But even with drinking water, there can be too much of a good thing.
They already have, it's provided by apple.
3 414
Apple instructs that if you forget you combination for parental volume control simply restore the ipod. http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=30
"You couldn't listen to a walkman 8 hours a day,"
Yes, you could. You simply replaced the batteries. And FM stations back in the day were not as bad as they are now. (And neither was the music, but that's more so a matter of opinion.)
"With the stock headphones, settings above about 1/3rd of the indicator will cause permanent hearing damage if used for over an hour a day."
At that setting, the sound wasn't great either given the nature of FM. Furthermore, the output of the headphones wasn't that great at those levels either. The only reason people did crank the volume level with the headphones on was to call attention to themselves by blaring audio out so passerbys heard them (similar to boomboxes back around then, which have come full circle to the fools that blare their car audio to get noticed).
Not that one or the other is better as hearing loss is hearing loss, but people lose their hearing from playing their home or car stereos too loud too. In all the cars I've driven, you could crank the volume on their stock stereosto the point the audio was unbearable, borderline painful. My point is that there is a personal responsibility to choose what works for you, not to blame others for incompetence.
Just because a device has higher settings, doesn't mean it's for the headphones either. When I was strapped for cash, I frequently used a portable device (namely personal CD players when they were quite popular and standalone home stereo CD players were rather expensive) by plugging into into an amp or stereo linein; with headphones I listened to the player with a max volume setting of 4 out of 9 but put it to 8 or 9 to get the lineout signal up to pump into my ancient home stereo receiver. Just because the option exists doesn't mean it exists for headphones exclusively; it may be there so it works with other devices that are commonplace nowadays to the market.
It's actually pretty difficult to accurately test headphone sound levels because the sound level will depend on the volume of air in the ear canal (for ear buds) or under the cup (for over-ear headphones) as well as the leakage around the head phone. This is dependant on the size of the ear and the pressure of the head band on the head (for over-ear headphones). There's a reason why artificial ears and dummy heads cost thousands of dollars.
Mead Killion (founder of Etymotic Research) gave a talk in Boston recently, and he announced a product similar to what you are proposing, and it should go to market soon. Basically, it's a box that goes between the audio player and the headphones, it measures the voltage of the headphone output, and determines safe and unsafe levels. Rather than measuring SPL levels from the headphones directly, the unit will be factory programed with the output levels from various DAP/headphone combinations (determined using lab measurements) so it can map the voltage to the appropriate level.
[Dr. Killion also gave everyone at the talk a free pair of ER-6's, but that was just icing on the cake :) ]
The iPods have a little lock switch to prevent any controls from being accidentally activated. On my Nano, it's on the top edge.
Edith Keeler Must Die