How loud is too loud?

[Pyrrho]

< 85 dBA seems more like it than 90 dBA.

My Max/Peak level was only 82.5 dBA, so 90 dBA would be crazy loud.

You guys should do the same experiment and see what you get as your Peak dBA & dBC.

My *guess* is that you will probably be okay listening at the levels you say, assuming that you measured accurately and that you are watching a reasonable number of films in a day (perhaps 4 hours total), and otherwise avoid excess noise (e.g., lawnmowers, power tools, loud motorcycles, etc.). But I am no expert, and I am *presuming* that the OSHA numbers are not crazy high for what should be considered reasonable. I certainly would not recommend turning up the volume.

One of the problems is what I stated in my original post in this thread:

...
It is also worth pointing out the fact that no levels are demonstrated to be safe; one only demonstrates what causes harm. If no harm is noticed at some level, that does not guarantee that no harm has occurred. This is the way with scientific studies of safety; they look for harm, and if none is found, it is generally considered to be safe, but it is never actually proven to be safe, and normally, over time, the testing gets better so that harm is noticed with lower amounts of the thing tested. This applies to contaminants in food and water and other such matters as well.

So no one is going to be able to say absolutely that you are safe with what you are doing. (Well, some idiots might say anything, but they cannot know that it is safe.)


I seem to recall reading, many years ago, about old people in non-industrialized countries typically having excellent hearing, which suggests that most hearing loss is from excessive noise (because it is in industrialized activity that one typically experiences the most noise). If your hearing is significantly diminished from when you were 20, you have probably been exposed to excess noise, and so that might also be an indicator if your current listening habits are the same as always. Still, hearing loss can occur from other things (like disease and ear infections), so even if you have some loss of hearing, it isn't proof that it was noise that caused it; for that, one should see a doctor.

 

[cpp]

So you think 82.5 dBA Peak is too loud?

What is your actual peak SPL when you listen?

And for the record, I like measurements and numbers because I have an "engineering mind"!

82.5 not that loud if it's handling the peaks every now and then but continuous with higher peaks, my poor ears suffer. I usually listen around 65-85. Engineering mind, heck my EE along with a minor in Architectural Engineering would buy me a cup of coffee at the cafe, but that's not saying much.

 

[Steve81]

You guys should do the same experiment and see what you get as your Peak dBA & dBC.

A sample of a scene from Star Trek where the Kelvin rams the Narada, -5dB from reference, taken at the main listening position:

A Weighted

C Weighted

Unweighted