A music-lover's guide to tinnitus
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residentadvisor.net
> I like hearing my music at loud volumes, as everyone does.
I don't think this is true. A lot of people like going to the kinds of events that have loud music, but I've seen a lot of people who don't like the volume. One obvious example: most of the weddings I've been to recently turn into dance parties, and the volume creeps its way up and up. As this happens, a lot of the guests start moving farther from the speakers, off the dance floor, and eventually out of the room. Dancing: lots of fun. Ear-splitting volume: not necessarily.
At my wedding, we picked a great band and kept the music at a comfortable level, and most of the guests danced the whole time and even the non-dancing guests clustered around the dance floor. I can't prove causation, but I bet the tolerable volume had a lot to do with it.
So maybe the real solution is for people to start trying to figure out why the norm for concerts is to have the volume painfully loud. It's possible that guests just might enjoy them more with quieter music.
But I avoid restaurants and places with live music unless the sole purpose is dancing. They advertise live music as a feature but sadly I treat it as a negative.
Maybe it's just me, but I have never been at a restaurant/bar playing live music where I've thought "this is playing at exactly the right level of volume."
It's always set to 11. One louder than necessary.
I'm a musician, and play in wedding bands. I think I've seen enough weddings to suspect that you're probably right about causation.
Something people don't realize about wedding music is that it's not just for dancing. If done well, it can also serve other purposes as well. There will always be a mixed crowd at a wedding, including people who are either unable to fully participate in the socializing for the duration of the party -- e.g., the elderly and children -- or who are shy, or outsiders, whatever. They band can provide them with a focal point and source of entertainment.
At some weddings, the dance floor was taken over by children just tearing around, and at first it would annoy me, but I eventually realized that I was taking pressure off the parents so they could enjoy socializing with one another instead of trying to restrain their kids.
So maybe the real solution is for people to start trying to figure out why the norm for concerts is to have the volume painfully loud. It's possible that guests just might enjoy them more with quieter music.
Self indulgence and ignorance among the performers, including the sound crew if there is one. Everybody believes that their instrument, or their musical style, is the one that needs to be loud. And I freely admit that playing loud is fun.
I've also noticed a sort of ratchet effect. The musicians gradually get tired, and turn up the volume so they don't have to play as hard. Then they get excited and start playing harder. Then they get tired, and turn up the volume. I think that's one explanation for the ever-escalating volume levels.
> The musicians gradually get tired, and turn up the volume so they don't have to play as hard. Then they get excited and start playing harder. Then they get tired, and turn up the volume.
I think you answered it yourself. Also, from someone who played in a local band for a while (And a not-quite-so-local band thereafter), people who actually know how to use a PA are few and far between. I think most of the time people are lazy and just set the master volume to something that cuts over the chit-chat, then they just don't bother to go back and readjust that when things are quieter/louder.
Seriously folks. If you're performing live, or you bring people in live, make sure at least one of you hires a dedicated, trained PA technician. It's the difference between a mediocre band and a great band (One where you can hear all of the performers), and also helps a lot with ear safety. The performers and the attendees will thank you for it.
At one venue, we just pretended that the house PA was broken.
Sound engineers often suffer from a significant degree of noise-induced hearing loss. Hearing loss is highly dose-dependent, so working with live sound equipment on a daily basis is far more damaging than going to the occasional loud concert. As a result, they tend to set the house volume too loud. Noise-induced hearing loss affects the high frequencies first, so live sound is often extremely shrill and trebly to compensate. Those engineers who don't have noise-induced hearing loss have made a habit of wearing ear protection, which has basically the same effect.
The unfortunate solution is to wear ear protection to any amplified live music event. I recommend the Etymotic ER-20xs [2]. You'll hear a better, more balanced sound at a much safer volume level.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
[2]https://www.etymotic.com/consumer/hearing-protection/er20xs....
It seems very like colour profiling to me. Graphic designers seem to match to objective standards though, whilst sound techs seem instead to use their own perception at the time?
The problem is that good live sound is highly dynamic. If you ran the PA at exactly 85dBa all night, it would sound very flat and unengaging. You want to push the volume during lively upbeat songs and bring it back down for an intimate ballad, you want a bit of a lift during the chorus, you want natural crescendos and diminuendos. Really good engineers can maintain this sense of dynamism while keeping the overall levels under control by using time-averaged metering, but systems capable of that are quite costly.
Achieving a consistent volume level throughout the venue is much easier said than done. Normal loudspeakers follow the inverse square law, so the sound will be much louder close to the PA system. You can't just put a bunch of speakers all over the room, because you'll get weird phase effects - sound moves at about one foot per millisecond, so additional speakers tend to cause very unpleasant delay and comb filtering effects [2]. This can be mitigated by the use of electronic delay compensation for the additional relay speakers, but not eliminated entirely.
The inverse square law can be evaded by using a line array loudspeaker system [3]. Theses systems use multiple loudspeakers in a phased array, which produces a cylindrical rather than spherical wavefront. Line arrays give a much more even distribution of sound and also reduce the amount of energy that is reflected from the ceiling and floor, providing a much clearer sound with more accurate transient response. Historically, line arrays have been expensive and difficult to configure, so they have been confined to large venues and high-end touring systems. Compact integrated line array systems are now available from many manufacturers, so hopefully we should see an improvement in the general standard of live sound over the coming years.
[1] https://noiselimiters.co.uk/scx-noise-limiter-and-contactor-...
I was thinking more having an RMS max target dBA/dB(SPL) and a cut-off above that to limit instantaneous volume rather than requiring a particular level for the night.
I'm in the UK; I know a little about phase effects having set up a few room level PAs (5 instruments, 3 mics, 6 speakers, single board; that sort of size). However, I'm not familiar with large set-ups as I've only attended smaller concerts of the order of 100s-1000s of people.
I used to wear ER-20s and they were fine. Alpine MusicSafe Pro were good too. Both comfortable, and did they job.
Alpine PartyPlugs didn't sounds as good to me, but they were more discrete so great for house parties and stuff.
I switched to Ear Peace HD's about a year ago.
Ear Peace are mentioned below the article. I don't know if it was sponsored. I'm certainly not sponsored by them.
I love EDM, DnB especially, but I'm a mosher at heart. The EPHD's don't hurt as much if an errant crowd-surfer happens to smack into my ear.
The EPHD's are even less noticeable than the Alpine PartyPlugs too.
I started wearing earplugs when I started working with VoIP systems a decade and a half ago. I'd be going to a few metal gigs a month and it was always painfully loud. I'd have ringing in the ears after every gig, and I'd sleep badly and feel almost hungover the next morning.
I have similarly sensitive hearing to the lady in the article, even restaurants and cinemas will cause me to pop my earplugs in. I keep a set attached to my keys. (The EPHD's come with a black metal tube keyring case.)
I couldn't go back to not wearing earplugs. If anything, they made gigs sound better to me.
>If anything, they made gigs sound better to me.
As I mentioned in my comment, the sound engineer is almost certainly either wearing ear plugs or half deaf. Either one causes a substantial roll-off of high frequencies, so the engineer is likely to subconsciously compensate by boosting the treble in the mix. If you've got plugs in, you're hearing something much closer to his intended mix. It's a totally perverse situation, but gigs almost always sound better with ear protection.
I've visited festivals that obviously hired professional people for their sound and had rather well-known bands on their line up (Iron Maiden and Hammerfall, for example) and that had terrible sound.
The volume would be cranked up way to much, proving to be even beyond the limits of the equipment, which led to the sound mostly being very obviously oversaturated. All the while I couldn't imagine being near the place without ear protection, which made the whole thing even more pointless.
Honestly, setups like that only ruin the experience of the paying customer. I can't fathom the idea that no-one who is organizing such events isn't having a sincere word with their sound crew after the first song.
After he and the sound system moved in, I listen to music (of all kinds) quite a bit louder in our living room: My earlier crappy sound system just didn't sound good at high volumes while this system sounds beautiful as high as we care to crank it before we decide that we're being too unreasonably inconsiderate to our neighbors.
There was a music festival about 2 miles from my home a few years ago. On the night the Foo Fighters played we could hear some noise occasionally but never for more than a few seconds. It went up and down. The second night Avicii played. I could hear it clear all night. It wasn't louder (as it was in a residential area so volume was limited) but it was at the peak level for most of the night.
There is a big and varied universe of electronic, most of which is a lot more dynamic than radio-pop artists like Avicii.
If you listen to classical music (e.g. recordings of "Das deutsche Grammophon"), you'll realize that often, the opposite effect is true: The music has such a high dynamic range that you inevitably have to raise the volume in order to be able to discern the details in a pianissimo-part, which makes the fortissimo-parts deafening. So, there are not only upsides to low compression ;-)
1. earplugs at shows or anywhere with sustained loud sound are critical. Disposable foam earplugs are a last resort. If you are a frequent concert-goer, do yourself a favor and AT LEAST get a pair of Eymotic ETY-Plugs or something similar ($13, https://www.amazon.com/ETY-Plugs-Fidelity-Earplugs-Standard-...). They will fit way better, isolate more sound, and sound a TON better; you will still be able to enjoy the show, I promise.
2. If you go to shows a lot, get custom plugs made; just do it. Price will be $80-$200, including getting professional molds made by an audiologist, but it is worth it. I can not even feel mine when they are in my ears, the fit is that good (mine are from 64 Audio, they have a 20% off sale a few times a year).
3. If you spend a lot of time with headphones, be really careful about keeping the volume low. If something sounds too faint, just leave it for a few minutes; a lot of they time your ears adjust and that lower volume you thought was too faint is actually just fine or maybe even still too loud.
4. I acknowledge how ridiculous of a suggestion this is price wise, but if you spend hours a day with headphones on, consider custom molded IEMs. Yes, they are expensive as shit (anywhere from ~$250 to infinity dollars), but they will seal in your ears perfectly. This gives you much better isolation from ambient sound in your environment, so you can listen to music at MUCH lower volumes comfortably. On average, sound quality is MUCH better than the headphones/earbuds you were using before too.
Do not fuck about with your hearing.
There. A startup idea, or at least a nice side project for someone familiar with Android coding.
I just gave it a try on my 2014 Moto X (which has had weird EQ-related bugs in some other apps) and it worked fine. I was able to make fine adjustments to audio whether it was playing from Firefox, YouTube, or my music app of choice.
Meanwhile the entire upper 60% of the volume range has zero utility. I cannot imagine the pain that max volume would induce.
If the option exists, it may be in with other audio/volume options, or it could be with the parental controls options.
If you're listening to something like YouTube, or streaming audio through a web browser, then a music player app isn't going to cut it for you. There are some systemwide EQ apps, but I think they didn't work well (or maybe at all) on my 2014 Moto X, so I can't recommend any specific one.
I agree with the other answers about getting an in-line volume control -- if you're using wired headphones. They're also great on airplanes: turn the provided entertainment up to maximum volume with the buttons on the armrest or wherever; turn the volume on the in-line attenuator down to nearly zero; listen in comfort. I noticed that whenever an announcement is made in the cabin, it seems to disregard your volume setting on the entertainment and just blasts your ears at 100%. If you've already set your in-line attenuator to deal with movies at 100%, then the announcement doesn't hurt your eardrums. I bought this one because it doesn't add a lot of extra length to the cable [1].
[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.maxmpz.aud...
I'd expect that sort of thing would be a default in audio players and TVs but at my price level I never see it anywhere.
I just want to hear the whispers without being discombobulated by the louder parts.
IMO the effect isn't quite strong enough to be 100% effective, but it's better than nothing.
And +1 on the custom earmold. I use mine routinely. I do use the earasers when attending shows with a moshpit, as it's possible to have the filters get dislodged and lost in the fray.
I bet you're also one of those people who has high attention to detail in life, is aware of most things going on around you, etc. (aka highly sensitive person).
I find that moving to another country and NOT learning the language helps :). It makes the background noise non-sensical, and thus relieves a ton of mental effort.
Like pain becoming more acute when you think about it, this sound always seems louder to me when I'm stressing about the health of my hearing. I notice retrospectively that I never notice it when engaged in any other activity, even if it's very quiet about.
One trick I play on myself when I turn down the volume is to first turn it down lower than I want it, then turn it back up to the desired level. That way it feels like I'm coming off a volume increase instead of an overall decrease, and I seem to adjust faster.
You never quite know when your friends will want to meet/go somewhere noisy.
This seems to me very similar to the reasons people give to avoid using condoms. And helmets. And smoking.
I think putting hundreds of young people in a room guaranteed to give you hearing loss is madness. But then again, I was always boring.
I'm starting to think that people at venues ought to be able to sue venue owners for any sound that is over 85 decibels.
I'm also maybe grumpier because I went to a show last night and I've had weird hearing all morning. :/
But my point was that many environments we consider "safe", "normal", or "enjoyable" are actually dangerous to our hearing, so we have to enter them with an understanding that we are trading temporary enjoyment for long-term health.
Which is quite loud.
Unfortunately, a sound system of that quality is extremely expensive and requires skilled workers to operate each night, so only clubs in places that allow clubs to operate openly and make money can afford it.
If a city doesn't allow clubs to stay open all night, or if the police crack down on drug use, the clubs go underground and don't make any money (or won't invest it in equipment that may be confiscated). Then, they use lower-quality equipment that must be played too loud in order to fill the space, and don't hire sound engineers to operate the system properly and safely.
How do the accoustcs change from one day to the next?
https://www.prosoundtraining.com/2014/10/16/model-audience-a...
The technitian might also be key to keep the DJ in check. Nothing is worse than the sound of a clipping mixer because the DJ is inexperienced and thinks louder is better.
One of the most respected DJs in the Chicago footwork/juke scene always clips, at all times. It's apparently a thing.
People (and their clothes) absorb a lot of sound, especially in the higher frequencies. Cranking up a couple of horn tweeter (cringe) is not the solution; it only makes the stupid people deaf.
I was at Whiskey a Go Go not too long ago. The speaker stack for something that is really just a big room was insane.
Also, I take issue with "putting hundreds of young people in a room guaranteed to give you hearing loss". I've never been much of one for live music, I'm certainly no roadie, but I've been to plenty of raves and concerts in my time. I've been known to run extremely loud sound systems in my cars, crank headphones to the max (shy of distortion, of course), stand against speakers at performances, and generally treat my hearing like total shit. And yet, in my mid-30s, I have no symptoms of hearing loss, or any tinnitus. In fact, at least in certain scenarios, I have phenomenal hearing. I can hear (or detect?) when my wife's car drives up outside the front of the house from the back room. I can hear the footsteps of my cat down the hall in the middle of the night. I routinely get comments like "how did you hear that??" I'm not saying it won't happen to me, but I'm saying there's a remarkable variance in how and when these symptoms strike different people.
One of the nice things with wax plugs is you can adjust the volume by squishing so you can listen a bit without to see what you are missing.
I really can't understand how loud people can put the music on social gatherings like parties, weddings, etc. I do like loud (circa 90-96 dB A-weighted) music, but only if the following conditions are met:
- The sound system reproduces the music with good tonal balance and very loud distortion
- This loud level won't last more than 15 minutes
- The music is good :)
There is, at least in my country, some sort of obsession with adding music at all places. Like if music was necessary for any container with more than one human being...
Wear earplugs, friends!! I use the cheap orange 3M ones, made of foam, and, while they do change the freq response of your ear, it doesn't do it on a too obnoxious way.
From the article i found this:
> Finally, custom-moulded "musicians'" earplugs offer high sonic precision suitable for professional use.
I didn't know about this. This is great advice.
My tinnitus started despite being young and having subjected myself to far fewer loud noises, including concerts, than the average person. My doctor believes that mine is likely due to a neurological issue, but that we will never know the true cause. To satisfy our own curiosity (and determine if we could attempt to treat it with steroids, which is possible during the few weeks after the onset of tinnitus induced by hearing loss), we had my hearing tested. As expected, absolutely no hearing loss.
As others have said, I felt suicidal during those first few weeks. Thankfully, I've since learned to live with it.
An incredibly common feeling among those who have recently got tinnitus. I felt this way to and unfortunately no matter how many times I read that people learnt to live with it, I never really took it on board.
For anyone reading who has got it, it really does get better. Eventually (6 months min from what I have read) your brain starts to tune it out. Only a very, very small number of people are unfortunate enough to have it persist without some dulling. Try not to despair or panic, it almost certainly will significantly dull and fade into the background after a few months. At some point, it not being present will be normal again.
Nowadays I notice a mild shadow of what it once was, maybe 4 times a year for an hour after a severe initial case.
My ENT said the tinnitus was most likely caused by the bad ear infection and tried to assure me that me trying to pop my ears didn't have anything to do with it, but I can't help but feel like that wasn't the case, as I made the pain so much worse.
Anyways, agreed with others here that the first few months were the worst, and now it's mostly unnoticeable unless I actively think about it, drink a lot, or leave a loud environment.
Just in case people aren't familiar with the idiom.
His research on hearing loss, in particular hearing loss of musicians, deserves wide exposure for anyone considering making a career out of using their ears.
From one of his publications I use the following as a rule of thumb:
80db * 40hrs/week = permanent hearing damage
83db * 20hrs/week = permanent hearing damage
86db * 10hrs/week = permanent hearing damage
91db * 5hrs/week = permanent hearing damage
94db * 2.5hrs/week = permanent hearing damage
Further reading from Dr. Chasin: http://www.marshallchasinassociates.ca/hearing_articles.htm
Update - just tried it. 90-100db on the tube (Victoria line), 102 when they make announcements, 60db in the park, 25 in my room.
The "head thumping" thing from a few months back also grants a short reprieve from normal levels of tinnitus, but it's definitely a temporary thing. It also appears to have no triggers that relate to sound, and is not associated with abnormal hearing loss so far (I've lost more high frequencies than average for my age, but nothing between that threshold and ~25hz).
My wife has meniere's disease, so we need to protect her hearing in all moderately loud situations, (bars, music venues, movies). In advance of SXSW one year, I bought her a pair of these: http://amzn.to/2gK8qZv
"Musician's earplugs", so-to-speak, they attenuate all frequencies more evenly than standard foam plugs would. In effect just turning down the volume of the world a bit, not muffling it.
I don't have meniere's, but do get drained by bars and loud music. I hate to seem lame by wanting to leave a party/bar early, so I bought a pair for myself recently. They're just fantastic. Highly recommend.
My story: https://www.reddit.com/r/Menieres/comments/5ip7eq/i_was_diag...
An interesting study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22253033
If I sleep on my stomach too many days in a row, my tinnitus really flares up. I definitely think there's a neck component to it.
I'm not sure that's true in most cases. There's a NIH paper where they looked at 151 cases where the auditory nerve was cut and "Complete relief of tinnitus was achieved in 101 patients." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7671835
Not that you'd really want that as a treatment.
[1] http://mixmag.net/read/scientists-have-completed-trials-atte...
Has anyone here played with this technique before?
Related re-post from here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13140256
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yDCox-qKbk
Thump the back of your head like that with your ears covered well about 40 times and enjoy the silence.
Thankfully that's what it's always been to me. The ringing is the meaning of silence and the notes are not at odds with each other.
When I realised that other people didn't hear the ringing when it was silent, I was a fair bit shocked.
I'm exactly the same, although I do know what caused it for me. My mother's then-boyfriend was an abusive piece of crap who used to haul me around by my ears whenever he felt angry. Sometimes he would throw me head first into the wall by pulling my ears hard in that direction, then use the back of my head for subsequent blows, so it could be neurological rather than an audiological phenomenon. (You'd think she would've put a stop to that, but you would be wrong - she stayed with him for a few more years.)
Normally the ringing would stop after a few hours, but I remember the day that it never stopped. I got so used to it that I tuned it out and completely forgot that the world was ever silent.
The best earplugs are the ones you use!