
I Am Worried About My Ears - kawera
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/i-am-worried-about-my-ears?currentPage=all
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Yizahi
Two unrelated thoughts:

1) While degrading sound quality the dynamic range compression actually helps
with sound damage since you can hear quiet parts of a record without turning
volume to eleven. Sure, it is nice to listen sometimes to Deep Purple or
Beethoven 9th with proper dynamic range but it is rather taxing on ears in the
louder parts then and probably not advisable in long run.

2) It looks like every singe headphone user I've encountered listens on
insanely loud volume. Whenever I listen to someones work/home setup or stand
near a listener in a bus/subway etc. in exactly 100% of cases the volume is
too much for me (and I use headphones for two decades already). Tl;dr - turn
volume down if you care about your ears.

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dazc
Hearing is something we take for granted but when it becomes damaged it's
going to stay damaged for good. Seeing how many people today are cocooning
themselves in a world of sound, I worry what the consequences are going to be
in the next twenty years or so?

I suffer from mild tinnitus and one effect, that most non-sufferers don't
appreciate, is that when you're hearing is damaged it doesn't mean you're
hearing everything at low volume. Some sound is muffled, sure but higher
frequency sounds can be much more acute. This leads to anxiety and stress in
public places that other folks find hard to understand.

I am fortunate in that I can work from home or a private office, I'm not
forced to spend my days in a shared work space or other noisy environment; I
think I would suffer a nervous breakdown if I was?

If you're currently using loud music to cancel out the noise in your
workplace, or during your commute to work, stop now and find some other way of
dealing with it because damaging your hearing is not the solution.

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lloeki
The author links to a hearing test, but I find it seriously lacking. Basically
it's uncalibrated "what's the lowest volume you can hear those three tones
at?" followed by a questionnaire.

There are much, much better tests readily available[0], although as always, if
you have any doubts seeing a professional and using properly calibrated
equipment is best.

[0]:
[http://www.audiocheck.net/testtones_hearingtestaudiogram.php](http://www.audiocheck.net/testtones_hearingtestaudiogram.php)

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l33tbro
I used to rely on the New Yorker to give me thought-provoking and meaningful
content. Has it really gotten this pedestrian? Our ears are pretty resilient.
Yes, jamming earbuds and blasting 'Appetite for Destruction' on the regular is
not a great idea and could eventually give you tinnitus or hyperacusis, but
isn't that common sense at this point?

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sirwitti
Many things got mixed up here, let me try to untangle some of them:

There are many different types of hearing loss and hearing impairments.
Damaged Hair-cells (actually it's the stereocilia) are only one type that
happens mostly to people who are exposed to high sound pressure over a long
time (or very high sound pressure over short time). Constant noise of a city
is not nearly loud enough to do that physiologically.

But listening with inear headphones can and will damage your hair cells if you
listen too loud regularly.

Regarding hearing tests: Forget online hearing tests - they're total bullshit.
Even many of the tests done by professionals result in useless data because
it's you who needs to tell them whether or not you hear a specific frequency.
And the result only compares your abilities to a standard for your age (see
below about individuality). Therefor the results are highly dependent on
you're psyche, health, mood,...

Another mixup is sound pressure (physical volume) vs subjective loudness. High
sound pressure can damage your hair cells, high loudness cannot if sound
pressure is reasonably low. While the thing with loudness wars is bothersome
sometimes, it's not dangerous.

Oh I forgot about frequency related hearing loss: Many people think that you
can hear 20-20000Hz, but this is only a rough estimation and more importantly
highly individual and age related. So it's totally possible that your same-age
friend does or does not hear frequencies you do. Most people don't get past
16-17k at all. Secondly, the highest frequencies you're able to perceive get
lower and lower as you get older. Many old people can't perceive frequencies
higher than 8-10kHz. While they hear worse then others the critical frequency
areas for speech (formants) lie way below that. Even music perception works
quite fine (although it won't be that crisp anymore).

Tinnitus is another story which can have so many causes (destroyed haircells
being only one), stress, tendons in the neck and some others.

So don't pull up the volume unnecessarily on your earphones and you'll be
fine.

Edit: Fixed typos.

~~~
andreaferretti
What about noise cancelling earphones? They should allow to listen to music
much less loud - any adverse effect is known?

~~~
sirwitti
Yes as far as I know that's a pretty good reason to use noise cancelling
earphones. You could still turn the volume up too high though if you didn't
care about it.

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maho
Worry not, dear author! Being mindful of your inner-ear health is certainly a
good habit, but (moderate) hearing loss is not as scary as you might think.

I have oteosclerosis with accompanying inner-ear damage after stapedectomy or
-dotomy, I forgot. I lost 10-20dB on one ear, 20-40dB on the other. I am
amazed how much psychoacoustics save the day. Music does feel a little
different, but it is no less beatiful to listen to. In some pieces I
discovered brass sections I never truly appreciated, but most songs did not
change by much. More importantly, my kids and I are still able to sing
together as before.

The bothersome bits about hearing loss are having to ask "could you repeat
that?" a lot, not hearing quiet sounds (kid's breathing at night, oncoming
cars at a distance), and being more sensitive to loud noises. But so far,
music stayed beatiful.

ps: If anyone from Netflix is reading this, it would be amazing if I could set
a N-second delay for subtitles so that they don't spoil the jokes for me and
everyone else. Even better would be if I could view them on my cell phone
while we all watch on the big screen. I don't need subtitles all the time,
just occasionally, for the bits I didn't understand.

~~~
badpun
Hearing loss is one thing, but the tinnitus that often goes with it can at the
worst destroy your career and your life (people do commit suicides because of
it).

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snarfy
I'm not sure if it's normal, but I can flex the muscles inside my ears. When I
do it I can hear the muscles trembling loudly which overpowers other sounds.
It helps reduce the noise level and pain if there is a loud noise, especially
when I cannot put my fingers in my ears.

~~~
4ad
Careful with this, you might be doing more than just flexing your tensor
tympani muscle, you might also control the pressure inside your ear.

I can do both of these. The latter is rather dangerous in the long term,
although in the short term it does reduce the perceived volume quite a bit.
For some reason when I was a kid I preferred a negative pressure in my ears
which deformed my eardrum. I still do and I concisely need to remind myself to
reset the pressure back to normal.

~~~
andscoop
Do you have any more info on this? I have unilateral deafness and am
constantly increasing the pressure of my good ear throughout the day by
popping it. (The way I do this is sort by blowing a quick burst of air out my
nose and clicking my ear at the same time.) I have long worried it may not be
healthy but I have been doing it for years and have no recorded hearing loss
from it, I continue to do it because the added volume it gives me is sometimes
the difference between having to ask "what?" a third time in a row.

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vortico
>In recent decades, mastering engineers have been tasked with making studio
albums louder via the application of something called dynamic range
compression; essentially, the volume gets turned up on the quiet bits, and
turned down on the loud bits. The cumulative effect is a song that sounds
bigger and punchier

The writer doesn't seem to understand loudness here. This is exactly the
opposite effect of DRC (dynamic range compression). Music gets less punchier
and sounds smaller, as transients are pushed down in the mix. Listening to
music with less DRC is more damaging to your ears (although it sounds better),
if you are comparing two tracks with equal loudness. Keeping loudness constant
in this comparison is valid because we will adjust the volume knob based on
the track's psychoacoustic loudness.

Example:
[https://youtu.be/3Gmex_4hreQ?t=10](https://youtu.be/3Gmex_4hreQ?t=10) and
[https://youtu.be/3Gmex_4hreQ?t=70](https://youtu.be/3Gmex_4hreQ?t=70) have
roughly the same loudness. The first has less DRC and is more damaging to your
hearing.

This misunderstanding breaks down half of the article's argument. The other
half---that loud music is cooler than it was decades ago---is probably valid I
guess.

~~~
S_A_P
It also isn’t really compression that’s being used but brick wall limiting.
While many compressors can do a form of this, there are still the usual
suspects that started the loudness wars-like waves L2 ultramaximizer. For the
most part the egregious over limiting has fallen out of fashion but things way
more compressed than they used to be. Light soft knee compression can make
things sound a bit punchier since they don’t affect the initial attack
transient but boost volume of the remander of the sound.

~~~
vortico
Yes, I shouldn't be stealing the term _dynamic range compression_ from the
article since that's inaccurate. _Hard dynamics_ would be a better term to
describe overcompression, brick wall limiting, and maximizing.

Slow-attack compression certainly makes things sound punchier, but do they
increase transients relative to the loudness of the track? No, I still think
they can only decrease them.

Hearing is damaged by large absolute volumes of transients, with the small
exception that your ears are able to become slightly temporarily desensitized
around high levels of loudness. Since higher loudness causes listeners to turn
down music, they will also turn down the transients, so loudness makes tracks
safer.

Possibly the worst thing to do to your hearing music-wise, is to listen to
uncompressed kick drums for half and hour. They might even not sound loud at
all, but the pain will start kicking in before you know it.

------
everyone
This article has somewhat of an air of the callowness of youth, or perfect
health, about it.

When you're young, your body works perfectly pretty much. The first time you
develop an issue with your senses for example, it is quite shocking; going
from a state of perfection to imperfection, you focus on that one flaw.

As I age and more stuff is not working optimally, I have just stopped giving a
shit about these sort of issues, adopting a 'even the mona lisa's fallin
apart' attitude. I dont focus on the flaws, I focus on what I can still _do_.
Even if I'm only physically operating at 80% of my former capacity, say, I'm
still capable of accomplishing what I want to if I apply myself.

~~~
Vinnl
I hope I will be able to adopt this attitude some time, because right now, the
imperfections really bum me out.

~~~
everyone
Im a big science geek, reading pop-sci books from all fields. One thing I came
across is some work on human happiness. Apparently humans have a default state
of happiness, which is, 'I'm ok but I could be doing a bit better'. All
humans, from millionaires to poverty stricken, are almost always in this
state, a relative gain or loss will temporarily make you more or less happy
but you will quickly return to this default. As an evolutionary trait it makes
sense, a successful species wont be totally depressed and suicidal, or be
totally blissed out, not bothering to compete for resources and mates. Also on
a physiological level your body will produce a certain amount of dopamine and
serotonin and other mood chemicals.

The upshot of all this is that unless you are clinically depressed or have
some serotonin production deficiency or some-such, then other ailments,
hearing and vision impairment wont really affect your overall happiness. They
will _initially_ but then you will get used to that state and your happiness
will return to its status quo level.

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Faaak
When I cycle to work, I sometimes say things to honking drivers that honk for
a non serious issue (out of frustration, because they don't want to let
someone pass, because they think that someone is stupid, …) because I'm
getting fed up with the constant noise.

Half of the drivers say something like: "well, go live in the forest then". I
find it incredible that silence is ignored these days and that a noisy city is
becoming the norm; it's a shame: it makes us more stressed and less relaxed.

The majority of noises could be suppressed: honkings, old train brakes,
motorbikes without an exhaust, …, but people don't really seem to care (but
I'm sure it impacts everybody).

~~~
maddyboo
What's the deal with obnoxiously loud motorcycles?

I just cannot understand the appeal of riding around on something which
molests the eardrums of everyone within a 400ft radius.

~~~
shocks
It's so that car drivers can hear us and remember to look up from their phones
and not kill us.

Seriously though; the noise issue divides even the motorcycle community.
Advocates will tell you "loud pipes save lives" and are usually the equivalent
of "car guys" that live/breath bikes. Other will tell you that the only
defense is defensive riding and it's annoying.

I agree it's annoying, my bike isn't that loud, but anecdotally when I've
ridden louder bikes I feel safer; riding a bicycle I feel invisible. I always
hear loud bikes before I see them.

I wouldn't mind a louder bike, because I love the sound of engines; but I'd
feel self-conscious riding it around my house. The sound wouldn't be a problem
for my hearing because I wear custom ear plugs.

~~~
Faaak
Exactly: the sound isn't a problem for you (the riders), but it's a big
problem for the people that live around you.

~~~
shocks
Sure, but I'm suggesting that the lack of a sound also presents a problem for
us, the riders.

I don't think riders need extremely loud exhausts to be safe, but an exhaust
sound adds an element of safety that cannot be ignored. It's the same reason
why all vehicles are fitted with horns, after all.

I think people might be more understanding if they rode a motorcycle in a busy
city for a few months, and realised how many drivers (at least in my city,
London) are far too busy looking at Facebook to drive.

Driverless cars can't come soon enough; though I'm sure that road will lead to
motorcycles being made illegal anyway - but that's another story...

~~~
paulryanrogers
One of my driver's ed instructors was a rider who opposed loud pipes. His
reasoning was that drivers ahead look left or right to find the sound, often
drifting slightly when they do. Then the risk of the motorcycle being hit is
increased anyway.

