A cool generation going deaf

[Techie#1]

Hope this discussion doesnot start flaming,though hope members r matured wise guys NOT 2 do that for sake of the traditional decent forum routine@TE!

 

[Kneo]

If someone gets a chance, a couple of years back, Discovery had a documentary on human body which was very interesting. In that they actually showed an old person dying live and how the heart stops and a lot of useful information about your body. One of the parts was of ears and they had explained and showed the inner ear with some super microscopic cameras. There are some microscopic tentacles (3 or 5) with the middle one longest and the other two shorter on each sides. These break down over a period of time (as you age). They had actually shown an ear of a young fellow and an old person and shown how they break down, which is irreversible. As quoted by them this process is hastened by listening to loud music (they had shown how these tentacles vibrate when the sound waves reach them, how if the sound is lower, they vibrate just a little bit but if its huge, they are rattled !)

Even if you are not worried about hearing loss, do search for and see that documentary, its amazing.

 

[saumilsingh]

Please don't insult my intelligence dude... no need to get aggressive and then say you took no offence. At no point did I imply your posts were fruity-textbook answers you mugged for an exam or test, so hold your tongue before you call my opinions or outlook on life, care-free. People have different opinions, deal with it - don't waltz around like mr.goody-two-shoes trying to judge people and waving around your qualifications. IMO, a person's ethics represent their qualification/s and you need a few lessons on that.

I am sure he meant 'carefree' in a much less demeaning way than you took it. Forum text has a tendency to seem rude when it wasn't meant to be.

 

[chic_magnet]

actually.. RIO might not agree fully with what medpal has to say .. cause maybe he`s used to loud music all the time...

i normally hear music at low - moderate volumes (cant go high, cause by the time i come home , parents also come home from work )..

now when i do listen to music at high volumes even for a short period of time.. i do feel irritated.. maybe cause the music is high.. and ya temporarily my hearing does get affected.. though if i lower the volume, in sometime everything seems to be normal..

like yesterday.. i was listening to music at full volume for more then 2 hours..i couldnt come anywhere near the speakers when the music was playing cause it would kinda almost hurt my ears! ..only came near it when the track stopped playing lol..and changed to another track etc etc etc...

but after 2 hours i did start feeling dizzy.. so much. .so that i had to go and sleep... after sleeping for an hour.. everything seemed fine...

(dizzy i think i felt cause i was listening to trance....if it was rock, i would have been totally mind fcked! lolz(not that i hate rock, just imagining what state i would be in after 2 hours of high decibel moozik)

so hmm. .. could it be ..that your so used to it? you dont think its affecting you??

cause i know loud moozik does affect me.. and affects me quickly at that..

 

[Chaos]

^^Loudness is very subjective... what seems loud to one person may not be to another. The reason you feel irritated with loud music is because of distortion... Low end speakers distort to a large extent the moment you play them loud. The ear can't tolerate this distortion and this causes fatigue. Its the same with low end headphones too... I can keep an open circumaural design sennheiser on my ears for hours at a stretch but can't tolerate in canals or standard earphones or for that matter closed headphones for more than a few minutes. Listening fatigue depends on equipment to a large degree and most of the time its this distortion and unnatural sound that causes discomfort and not music... I agree in most part with both sides of the argument... though I feel the title of the article is sensationalist and the situation ain't that bad. Same reason why I(and probably most others) can't listen to thrash/death metal for too long either. Moral of the story... listen to ur ears. When you feel discomfort, STOP!

Lemma: If you want your music louder, upgrade ur equipment .

 

[x86]

damnit.. this thread made me sweat all the way.
i'm used to listenin g music at 100% on my phones doing this for previous one year specially in trains.
how do i know how much my ear has been damaged? .

 

[Powersurge]

ok, 4 page thread so i skipped most of it.. lol

but concerning musicians going deaf or not.. you cited the example of pete townshend and the like.. yes, most musicians wont go deaf.. and the crowd will cause the the PA at concerts is aimed at the CROWDS people.. and the speakers used are pushing sound towards the audience.. trust me, if the speakers were as loud to the performing band as they are to the audience as you are assuming, they wouldnt use in ear monitors (to hear ther what theyre playing) and general mix monitors... which u can see on any stage.

and yes, listening to ipods at hi vol will cause hearing damage (if i recall there was a lawsuit against apple and all their new ipods have the volume output reduced) and as someone said even outside traffic will cause hearing damage..

it is the extent at howmuch you would want to reduce your hearing damage which is the talking point... im sure most of us arent really gonna take active measures in trying to reduce hearing damage from traffic and random sounds of the city anyways.

but hey, listen to loud music from earphones, you are BOUND get get an audiometric notch, wether u like it or not, most of us are already deaf (speaking in the terms we cannot hear certain frequencies that we were able to earlier)

and if you are really paranoid about saving your precious ears.. try using something like this

 

[dipdude]

British charity wants warning labels on MP3 players

The group claims that 58 percent of UK citizens between the ages of 16 and 30 are "completely unaware of any risk to their hearing" from listening to MP3 players at high volumes for long periods of time. The RNID is calling on device manufacturers to include more explicit and obvious warnings on their packaging about the potential dangers of long-term use. The group is particularly concerned about MP3 players that are used to drown out background noise such as that found on a subway or bus, since such usage requires the player to be jacked up to higher-than-normal levels in order to hear the music.

The bottom line: take breaks, set the volume a notch or two below your usual level, and don't use players to drown out background noise for long periods of time. This is the part of the writeup where we would usually point out that these are simply common sense suggestions, but apparently they are not. So kudos to the RNID for spreading the word, and for doing it without suing Apple.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060906-7679.html