I have slight hearing loss in my right ear from years of using power tools without hearing protection and riding non-silenced chainsaw-engined go-karts as a kid, and more recently due to scubadiving barotrauma. While this is not serious enough to be flagged in our annual occupational hearing tests, it does interfere with following conversations in noisy environments, when ironically my left ear goes "voice deaf".
So as a result I am very cautious to keep my headphone listening levels down. Sure I enjoy a loud blast now and again but I would consider myself quite conservative with the volume knob when donning my cans.
A couple of weeks ago at the Pretoria mini meet I was very interested to witness several attendees listen louder than I do ... and not just a little bit louder. This made me wonder how loud loud really is. But without an SPL (Sound Pressure Level) meter there is no ay of measuring this, except from the dulled sense of hearing or mild tinnitus following a good listening session.
From my training as an industrial engineer I know there is a correlation between noise (including music) levels and safe exposure time limits. Essentially the louder the noise, the less exposure is required to result in permanent hearing damage. This is illustrated in the picture below:
All good and well, but again without an SPL meter there is no way to know how loud exposure from headphone listening is, and subsequently what the safe exposure limit is. Then I read with interest that Mervin suggested downloading an SPL app (http://www.avforums.co.za/index.php/topic,53278.msg669732.html) ... now why did I not think of that!
So off to the Google Play Store I went and chose this free app:
This thing is incredible!, and offers much better functionality than the megabuck Br?el & Kj?r units we used at university ? there is dBA and dBC weighting, abosolute and releative modes, third octave spectrum analysis, runtime graphs, you name it. Maybe not quite calibrated scientific instrument quality but you just gotta love what?s out there for free these days!
So armed with this new toy stuck between the earcups of a pair of Sennheiser HD650?s I was ready to explore my own listening patterns in more details. I was shocked with what I saw ? my normal listening is around 90 ? 95 dB ? well over the recommended 85dB threshold value. At these levels more than 4 to 8 hours per week could result in permanent hearing damage! What is even more eye opening is that it doesn?t take much to drift into night club / rock concert territory around 110 to 120 dB with the potential to cause damage in just 15 minutes of exposure! This has been a hugely educational experience and I am now much more gentle with the big knob than before, limiting really loud sessions to very short bursts.
My challenge to you is to download the same app and post your own listening levels here.
So as a result I am very cautious to keep my headphone listening levels down. Sure I enjoy a loud blast now and again but I would consider myself quite conservative with the volume knob when donning my cans.
A couple of weeks ago at the Pretoria mini meet I was very interested to witness several attendees listen louder than I do ... and not just a little bit louder. This made me wonder how loud loud really is. But without an SPL (Sound Pressure Level) meter there is no ay of measuring this, except from the dulled sense of hearing or mild tinnitus following a good listening session.
From my training as an industrial engineer I know there is a correlation between noise (including music) levels and safe exposure time limits. Essentially the louder the noise, the less exposure is required to result in permanent hearing damage. This is illustrated in the picture below:
All good and well, but again without an SPL meter there is no way to know how loud exposure from headphone listening is, and subsequently what the safe exposure limit is. Then I read with interest that Mervin suggested downloading an SPL app (http://www.avforums.co.za/index.php/topic,53278.msg669732.html) ... now why did I not think of that!
So off to the Google Play Store I went and chose this free app:
This thing is incredible!, and offers much better functionality than the megabuck Br?el & Kj?r units we used at university ? there is dBA and dBC weighting, abosolute and releative modes, third octave spectrum analysis, runtime graphs, you name it. Maybe not quite calibrated scientific instrument quality but you just gotta love what?s out there for free these days!
So armed with this new toy stuck between the earcups of a pair of Sennheiser HD650?s I was ready to explore my own listening patterns in more details. I was shocked with what I saw ? my normal listening is around 90 ? 95 dB ? well over the recommended 85dB threshold value. At these levels more than 4 to 8 hours per week could result in permanent hearing damage! What is even more eye opening is that it doesn?t take much to drift into night club / rock concert territory around 110 to 120 dB with the potential to cause damage in just 15 minutes of exposure! This has been a hugely educational experience and I am now much more gentle with the big knob than before, limiting really loud sessions to very short bursts.
My challenge to you is to download the same app and post your own listening levels here.
