Earbuds are bad for your hearing
onezero.medium.com
onezero.medium.com
That might be true, but I'd bet good money most people chose non-isolating earbuds because they don't know any better (or know of the existence of isolating earbuds).
My Audio Technica ATH-IM02 earbuds in comparison require very careful positioning, even though it offers far superior quality in a quiet environment.
Custom IEMs can isolate noise almost as well as fully inserted foam earplugs, and they take only a second to insert or remove. The convenience and sound-blocking consistency are why I prefer them to "universal" tipped IEMs.
Cheapo shure se215 with triple flange or foam tips and you're golden. I have them on all day and I even manage to sleep with them (when I accidentally fall asleep while listening to a podcast)
You can set an iOS volume limit of no more than 50% on your phone to get a head start at protecting your hearing, but most people will find this unacceptable in the short-term due to perceived “quietness”.
Active noise canceling is a valid option, but only for either headphones over the ears or earbuds that are molded to fit your ear canal, at which point you likely won’t need ANC assuming that it stills works at all after the molds are attached!
Where does one get those and how much does it cost?
Examples:
https://custom.ultimateears.com/products/earphones
The Etymotics are $150 for the custom ear molds, and the price of the headphones which range from $60 to a few $hundred.
Though according to the map on their website the nearest place to me that does the molds is a 5 hour drive away. I guess you could probably get most audiologists to do it for you anyway?
The only other earbuds I've tried that have such a good seal are models with memory-foam type surrounds you compress before you insert, but they're a bit of work to put in.
The weird sound doesn't come from the earbud per say, it comes from the cables brushing against your clothes. Try flat cables it removes most of it. Or use earbuds that run the cables behind your ears / down your back.
I'm confident there's a healthy set of users who understand this as well.
I don't really feel comfortable walking in the woods. I basically can't imagine walking in a city with earphones in.
So i mean that i can't really tell what will work for you. This channel can help, he has some decent reviews https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIw1An1OUp4XIv_h6si2etQ/vid...
I had couple KZ back in 2016-17 and they were pretty much the same as 15-30$ sennheisers, wasn't impressed, but the headphones industry is changing way too fast, so even today i would have to make a market research myself for a new pair if i wanted another sound signature.
Btw my first kinda decent pair was Sony Xba-C10 (got them for 25$ on sale) and it was my 1-st single armature driver iem and i still think that they can play classical solo piano music (like Chopin or Debussy) equally well as any of my 100-200$ headphones (even better then Pinnacle). Yes they have 0 bass and you can't play any modern music on them.
I've had a couple pairs of midrange Sony earbuds (MDR-E821V) that I've used for the last 10+ years. I've replaced the padding with some silicone ones, but other than that, they work great for me.
However I do believe that Apple did a lot of research to find a good basic shape, and I and quite a few other dolls I know prefer them for their breathability (your ear isn’t designed to be sealed up) and sound awareness.
i chose those earbuds for 3 reasons:
i can't stand having something stuck in my ears (makes me gag)
huge headphones that cover the ears look out of place, and i'd have to take them off if i actually do want to talk to someone. they also signal very much a "do not bother me" and "i don't care about my surroundings" message that i fear can come off as rude.
my kids play with the rubbers and pull them off because it's interesting. (they are explorers, that's their job)
at least this article makes me reconsider alternative options.
Sure, but the study that's discussed showed that most people don't do that. They do indeed turn the volume up to dangerous levels, mediated by the type of earphones they're using. You and I are not the norm, and so it's something that's worth looking into, no?
> don’t increase the volume to compensate
Anecdotally, the number of people whose music I can hear from meters away suggests that many people do increase the volume to compensate.
With that said, I googled and came up blank looking for these studies, so you could be right. Without the studies to back it up, what I wrote is kinda meaningless.
You should also factor in diminished enjoyment - if you're worried about bothering your neighbor by turning up the volume and are just keeping it lower out of courtesy, well, that's not really an ideal scenario either, especially if you have to put up with barely hearing what you're listening to as a result.
Additionally, many of the products being suggested here are not really rated very well and would be hard to suggest to someone listening on even using cheap stuff like the Philips TX2. I don't understand how these can be recommended by any reasonable measure.
$30 https://www.innerfidelity.com/images/PhilipsTX2.pdf
A few suggestions from the article, $50 and $200+ https://www.rtings.com/headphones/1-2/graph#617/2085/463
You can mitigate this by reducing the decibel level. One excellent way of doing this is by blocking out the external sound, so you can listen to the sound you want at a lower level.
The easiest way to do that is to use in-ear monitors, IEMs, headphones that go quite deeply into your ears. Using Comply foam tips or silicone triple-flange tips can reduce the outside noise 25-35dB.
Alternatively, you can use ear defenders on top of nearly any earphone in existence.
I highly recommend them!
> I went with https://pro.ultimateears.com/home and have been really happy with them.
I have a buddy that got some Etymotics and he's really happy with them.
Make sure you get a good carrying case for them. I dropped mine when I first got them and had to send them in for repairs. Now I keep them in a pelican case and haven't had any problems.
Oh and DO NOT buy the DIY ear mold kits - go to an audiologist and have them do it. It's not worth messing up your ears.
Earbuds and a noisy car window down can do that, just for a point of easy comparison.
You should take a look at your EQ profile too. If you've got the lows and highs boosted up, that decimal number actually goes down, because you are driving those pretty hard, relative to the otherwise closer to flat sound.
Finally, you cannot always trust the warning on say a Samsung phone. It all depends on the encode, and its relative volume When that all reaches your ears. It is better than nothing though.
I have a little minor league loss on my drivers ear side. Many years driving with the window down. It all adds up.
Finally, I think there's a lot of damage being done by cheap earbuds. An awful lot of the cheap ones have really bad notches and peaks. People will turn them up to get all of the sound, and those sharp peaks can be 10DB or greater above the norm. It's just carving a hole in your ears. Get good earbuds. You can run them at a lower volume, and they sound better.
Wow, had no idea. Just looked it up and it's indeed correct. I had been going off the 85 db standard, which:
1. Is only for work exposure, assuming quiet elsewhere 2. Will nonetheless cause hearing loss in 8% of people when at workplace levels over a lifetime of work.
https://www.quietcommunities.org/noise-level-hearing-loss-pr...
Glad you looked it up. IMHO, people should be better informed on this.
A walk around with a sound meter app is very enlightening.
Am excited for ios 13, as it will bring noise detection to all apple watch and headphones. I think this will lead to more noise complaints in chronically loud environments, esp by workers.
For headphones, a decent test is seeing whether you can still hear yourself talk.
Portables on a keychain are a great idea!
Iirc I selected them based on:
1. Reviews were decent
2. At least one person on hn had mentioned them
3. The carrying case is ultra compact
One plastic thing on the case broke, but it still functions. I like that they're clear, a bit harder to see.
For planes though I use the generic orange ones. I keep some in my travel bag at all times. The keychain ones are for unplanned situations I can't avoid.
Though your 70 db link has got me wondering even about subways and trains. Is a two hour journey at ~85 db worth worrying about? I had assumed it wasn't based on osha.
I'd use over ear headphones but it isn't clear to me how much they dampen, apart from the nrr rated industrial ones.
Over 20 years it just happens. I noticed one day when listening to some signals. Levels, at some frequencies were different.
Again, minor league. But, due to a few decades driving window down, it all did add up to a little something.
Overall in my life, apart from that window business, I have taken good care. The highs are rolling off some now. Normal.
Discrimination is still really good. But, I can now tell left ear from right.
Thanks for the tip. I will have to get a set.
So, you have to decide what is worth what.
At my peak, I could hear well through 22khz.
Today, I still hear very well, but range has dropped. 17khz or so.
I do not care much.
Discrimination, sensitivity related to things under 12khz is where all the good stuff is. Mostly normal aging. I have no worries. I can still often tell you who made a vintage watch by the sounds it makes.
Music is still great!
With a ton of work, I could have preserved more sensitivity, and a bit of range. But I have lived well too.
You must evaluate these things and act or not, now.
Hopefully, you have no worries aging up too.
It's not difficult to understand that ears are complex and sensitive. Just a little physical education could help illustrate to children that preserving their ears is of some importance. The problem is not non-isolating earphones. The problem is ignorance.
Also, I mentioned social education. Regarding non-isolating "earbuds", god help us, please educate people that those not wearing the earbuds probably do not want to hear your crappy music; and if you turn it up loud enough to drown out the ambient noise, then you will be essentially providing a narrow band public performance of whatever you are listening to.
Meanwhile, for less than $200 you can have some exceptional Shure in ear headphones that provide pretty flat and efficient response while simultaneously blocking out as much ambient sound as active (more expensive and battery operated) headphones do.
And this is coming from a guy with ~$1000 headphone setup at work..
edit: heck, they go down to $5, though I'll definitely grant that in-ear ones were not very common until a few years ago. now they're absolutely everywhere: https://www.walmart.com/ip/In-Ear-Earphones-Wired-Earbuds-No...
Wish I had ever even considered that might not be good for me
Years ago, there was a tweet (by a German high school student) that put this very succinctly: "I have no idea about the job market, budgeting, investing, insurances, pension plans. But I can write a poem analysis. In 5 languages."
On linux you could hack something together to speak the alsa volume level like amixer set Master 2+ && amixer get Master | grep dB | awk '{print $4}' | espeak -s 300
Do other people use something similar?
Meanwhile, those of us with other devices (such as using a car's aux jack) have to suffer with annoying notices and delays in boosting the volume to 100%.
Your OS-level volume level is the maximum permitted level.
The volume in your ears is that multiplied by the amplitude of what you're listening to.
It frustrates me that when I listen to soft passages in classical music, I literally cannot turn the volume up loud enough to hear it because it won't go any higher. But then I hear a system beep and it leaves my ears ringing it's so loud.
What I really wish is that dynamic volume equalization would be built in as an option to the OS itself. Then "maximum" might actually be something useful.
The audio term is "compression". And it's unbelievable that it isn't a standard OS-level feature. It is not computationally expensive to implement.
Now we have the panic that these don't block out enough noise, which, sacre bleu!, apparently makes things even worse!
Though for what it's worth my hearing's been shot since my late 30s. I suspect loud concerts, gunshots, explosions, and manned rocket launches have been worse.
Nobody mentioned driving with the window down. Got caught by that.
Now I'm not even 30 and I have tinnitus.
Often I have to crank-up the volume on my phone because the street I'm walking along is so loud.
There are dump trucks, construction work, motorcycles, and buses driving and stopping only a few metres away, it can get loud very suddenly.
And I'm not traveling along highways. I live in downtown Vancouver, walking along one-way streets like Hornby.
Just something I've noticed recently.
They are targeted. The issue is that in the end, it's a geometry problem -- in curves, one wheel wants to move faster than the other, which results in one wheel flange being dragged across the railhead. The treatments range from the minor (friction modification such as lubricants or sand) to the major (independent wheels, steerable trucks, wheel/rail dampers) and all have affects on vehicle performance on tangent track, or high costs.
I heard from someone that rode it when it was new that it used to be much, much quieter.
So, I’m not sure I buy that the current level of screeching is by design, and not due to lack of maintenance.
Qualitatively, I think that I have experienced similar painful noises in every decade since the late 1970s, when I was a little kid and my father worked for BART. In the early 1990s, I can remember people talking about how they sometimes got a quiet train or a loud train on a familiar commute. We had similar observations about different road surfaces put down by Caltrans. I tend to ride it at least once every 2-3 years during return visits. Also, at various places in the East Bay, weather depending, you can hear the early morning trains on at-grade or above-grade track from quite far away. I have heard very similar noises in recent years when visiting the same places, giving me a nostalgic kick as it sounded so familiar.
Of course once you have tight turns or cylindrical wheels (wtf BART) you get godawful screeching.
Standard wheels are conical. You can optimize the wheel and track profiles for curves, but that may affect the wheel behavior on tangent track where "hunting" might occur.
It's a tricky problem for sure, and I didn't intend to solve it with my comment, just shed some light on what the problem space actually is to people less familiar.
You need to simulate making a seal between the meter and the thing you want to measure. You can put the meter through a hole in a piece of foam to measure the sound of regular headphones.
For in-ears, I stared with a toilet paper tube and cut it down to a small cylinder and tried to seal the earbud in there.
I got one and found that my typical listening levels were within safety threshold, it actually made me confident to sometimes turn up some things a bit louder without worrying.
Another thing is comparing what you have to a known reference. The decibel levels of apple ear buds at different volume levels of an iphone are out there if you search. It won't be that accurate but it will give you a general idea.
>all the way up and only ten minutes is safe
same goes for lcd brightness. if the screen you're looking at is brighter than a sheet of paper would be, reduce its amplification.
i still believe in the power of humanity to reclaim its environmental awareness, and press a button accordingly.
The QC20s have way better noise cancellation and the frequency response on them (and most Bose products) is more pleasant to my ear as Bose tends to sound better at the lower frequencies.
Yes, the QC20s are 5x the cost - but in this case you get what you pay for.
I'm super bummed we're at AirPods 2.0 and still no in-ear option. It's not just an aesthetic choice, it's literally a public health concern, as the article states.
I own Bose QC35's and they're great, but they're bulky so I don't always carry them with me the way I can small earphones. I really wish Apple would make in-ear AirPods... I even bought some generic Chinese ones [2] but although they kind of work, they quality isn't anywhere close (in sound quality, in Bluetooth reliability, and size and in construction generally).
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Apple-Ear-Headphones-Remote-Mic/dp/B0...
[2] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07J2Z5DBM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...
My iPhone can detect decibel levels, plus it knows that it’s been spitting out 100db for 90 minutes. Why not show a warning?
Also the volume on the phone could have a “yellow” and “red” indication to visually show where things start to get too loud.
There are lots of hard problems in the world, is this really one of them?
Maybe for airpods and earpods, but not anything else hooked up via the dongle.
I greatly prefer airliner pilot over the ear headphones. They sound better, block out more noise, and don't fall off
I got some MPOW H5s from amazon. $50. Decent battery life. Bluetooth. Noise cancelling isn't anything to write home about. Sound quality is decent
This is actually exactly why I use AirPods. You can run and bike with them and still have some notion of what's going on around you.
When I want to cut out noise, I bust out my trusty QC20s, which actually seal the ear off and reduce plenty of noise, even before you turn them on.
So with earbuds, I find that I'm always increasing the volume, seeking body-shaking bass that they'll never produce.
For ad hoc testing, I like to use an An-ten-nae mix that includes a slide down to maybe 20 Hz. I can totally drive a small frame house with that cut.
Still, I can't crank it as much as I could when I lived in a house.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07QKZ58XH
They're never going to have the same power as larger headphones, but the sound quality has massively improved over the last decade.
https://www.soundguys.com/bone-conduction-headphones-20580/
If I had a long subway commute I'd consider using those and a pair of foam earplugs.
That said, I'd seriously consider them in some settings, e.g. while biking. Being able to hear your surroundings can be important.
For the same reason I'm generally hesitant to use a VR headset, as it almost completely blocks your senses. Total immersion is unnecessary to me.
https://www.nyneuroslp.com/presspdf/Subway%20and%20Bus%20Noi...
Citation needed before we dump another criticism on "milinneals" and their phone obsession.
Arw there actually more young people with hearing problems than before?
Are loud concerts not a more likely culprit? I know I've been to plenty in my day that led to ringing and clogged ears for a week, and I have super low level tinnitus as a result (I can hear the ringing in very quiet environments but not in day to day life).
"Brian Fligor, an audiologist who has studied the impact of earbuds on hearing damage, says that people typically listen to their earbuds about 13 decibels higher than the background noise."
"2014 research, conducted by Fligor and others, looked at the impact of urban environments on people’s headphone listening levels by measuring sound levels through a mannequin’s ears. The research involved asking passersby to take their headphones off and place them on this mannequin at the same volume level they had been listening to. The average listening level was 94 decibels, 58 percent of people polled were exceeding their weekly sound exposure limit — and an overwhelming 92 percent of them were wearing AirPod-style earbuds."
"2014 research" links to https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261256174_Cultural_...
"According to the American Osteopathic Association, approximately one in five teens today suffer some form of hearing damage, a rate that’s 30 percent higher than it was 20 years ago. The World Health Organization estimates that over “1 billion young people” are at risk of hearing loss, primarily from listening to music on headphones or earbuds."
There are links in those two sentences, too.
I have no idea if it's noise induced though. And if it is, jury's out on whether it's from live music, headphones/earbuds, firearms, or power tools.
How is it that it's taken this long for people to realize these fucking ear buds are bad for you?
Who thought, "Oh hey, let's shove a speaker directly into peoples ears so they can hear music louder than otherwise possible and they'll love us for it."
Jesus, leave it to the HN microcosm to pick up on something only after the "experts" published a bullshit article. lol
WITHIN 1 minute lol.
How about one of you dipshits run an algo on how long it takes for non-positive comments to be downvoted and see if it's even possible based on the user base.
If you don't mind being downvoted, then one can, of course, disregard that, but if one does, one shouldn't complain about being downvoted afterwards.