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Study Links Personal Music Players To Hearing Loss
fprintf writes "A recent NY Times article discusses links between personal music players and hearing loss. This is not anything new; personally, I have hearing loss from listening to my Sony Walkman cassette player many years ago. However, given the widespread use of the personal music players, I see people using earbuds everywhere; is there a technical solution to the potential danger?"
>>is there a technical solution to the potential danger?"
I used my mp3 player on a couple of flights. When I into a quiet hotel room and used it again i was shocked at the volume level i had used on the flight. If you are on a plane (train or buss as well), you tend to play it loud to drown out the bakground noise.
As I fly quite a bit, i bought a pair of noise reduction headphones. I went for a $75 pair at first, as I could not see the point of spending $300 on the Bose headphones. The $75 pair were pretty rublish, not much effect at all, so I splashed out another $300 on a pair of Bose noise reduction phones. They may be expensive, but they are worth the money as you can use a much lower volume setting and still hear everything very clearly.
I really recommend them as a way to protect your ears if you travel by plane, train or bus a lot. The luxary of having a cocoon of tranquility on the flight is also very nice to have.
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part of the problem is the use of dynamic range compression. not all music CDs or mp3s have the same dynamic range, so with most rock/pop/hip-hop/etc. the volume only varies between loud and very loud. but with classical or other genres where dynamic range is preserved, you'll have huge variances in volume. this means if you limit the media player volume to suit rock music, then when consumers listen to classical they'll have a hard time hearing the low to medium volume parts of the track. you could implement a feature to automatically normalize all the tracks played (i think the iPod already has this), but i don't know if this will cause a loss of dynamic range and thus negatively affect sound quality.
personally, i don't think PMP makers should artificially limit the speaker output to prevent hearing loss. some people have more sensitive ears than others, and some need the volume to be a little higher, whether due to the music they listen to or their hearing ability. i think a better idea would be to monitor the speaker output and display a warning to the user if the audio level is high enough to cause damage. this will give users the freedom to use their players as they wish while promoting safe listening habits.
Put down the music and run without it.
Your real objection is that you can't be alone with yourself for an extended time. You need something to drown that out.
t
Being a graduate audio systems engineer, one thing that springs to mind is to make speaker drivers in headphones less resonant between 3-5khz. It seems all I hear on bus/tube journeys from people listening to music is the hissing zingy twang of cymbals and guitar distortion.
The fact that this range is around the resonant frequency of the human ear canal means that this (already quite prominent) range of frequencies is amplified further by your body.
If earphones were more linear in their response perhaps people wouldn't damage their hearing as much - or turn up the volume.
I was a bit late going to my first proper rock concert, I was 18. I stood right at the front, and it was brilliant. Then I listened to the album using headphones when I got home -- but at full volume, because my hearing was still suffering from the concert and I wanted loud. Big mistake -- the next morning I couldn't hear anything. I've never been so scared as when I woke up at 5am because my ears hurt and I couldn't hear anything.
Thankfully my hearing returned in one ear the next day, and in the other the day after.
I think the headphones were to blame, but I bought some earplugs for about £15 from eBay and I've used them at every concert I've been to since then. They don't distort the music, and it's still fun, and I don't feel like my ears are full of fluff when I leave.
I don't use headphones after going to a club/gig either.
Don't lose the music! (excellent advice)