The Dangers of Headphones

[tonmeister]

Can the Germans be really proud of MP3 or has the digital stroke of genius desensitized the hearing of a complete generation?

Read this article to find out what technology writer Matthias Hohensee has to say about this.

 

[highfigh]

"There is some research indicating that some adolescents listen to Ipods at high levels for extended periods because they are almost addicted to listening that way and cannot stop because it makes them sad or depressed. Interviews with these people indicate they do not clearly understand the risks of permanent damage. It's an educational problem."

High SPL listening is common when kids are constantly trying to prove how "extreme" they are. If the kid is into some types of music, it's going to be played loud, period. Quite a few teenage kids came into the first stereo store I worked for, asking which speaker was best. I asked, "Best, or loudest?" and they answered with "What's the difference?".

I think some of the reason some people listen at high SPL is that nobody will tell them to turn it down- it's not usually disturbing others, like parents.

 

[MinusTheBear]

I made a post in your other thread a while back on my view relating to headphones and the MP3 generation.

http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=66341&page=4

 

[tonmeister]

I made a post in your other thread a while back on my view relating to headphones and the MP3 generation.

http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=66341&page=4

Thanks for pointing that out since it's relevant to the argument that the trend is better quality audio formats.

 

[MinusTheBear]

Environment is another factor that I would like to add that might contribute to hearing loss. I imagine most teenagers are not using closed style headphones or in ear monitors that attenuate outside noise when in public places like school and will compensate with the volume control. Young children and teenagers are generally stuck with the ear buds supplied with the portable music player that their parents buy them. Even if they want a after market pair of headphones for their MP3 player they will have to rely on their parents to purchase it since they will not have any or very little income.

 

[Alex2507]

That's like 2 intelligent posts by MinusTheBear ... most impressive.

 

[ifsixwasnin9]

At what age does your hearing system mature or stop growing? Mid-teens? You could make a lot of money if you invented headphones that didn't cause hearing damage.

There are also tons of people that listen to headphones in the car.

 

[its phillip]

Hopefully not while driving.

 

[highfigh]

At what age does your hearing system mature or stop growing? Mid-teens? You could make a lot of money if you invented headphones that didn't cause hearing damage.

There are also tons of people that listen to headphones in the car.

Koss started putting a warning about excessive SPL in the box with their headphones and Music Box radios as far back as the early '80s. IIRC, the Music Box headphones, which were the PortaPro, would only go to 95dB with the volume control wide open.

 

[highfigh]

At what age does your hearing system mature or stop growing? Mid-teens? You could make a lot of money if you invented headphones that didn't cause hearing damage.

There are also tons of people that listen to headphones in the car.

It depends. If it's kids, it they usually go deaf in their teens and if you're talking about women, their hearing actually gets so much better that it seems like they can read a man's mind. Men, OTOH, seem to go deaf shortly after marriage.

 

[highfigh]

Can the Germans be really proud of MP3 or has the digital stroke of genius desensitized the hearing of a complete generation?

Read this article to find out what technology writer Matthias Hohensee has to say about this.

I'd be proud of the MP3 format for it's generic storage capabilities- large amounts of speech or music using a small amount of space. As far as the quality, it's not great but for background musical noise or other programming, it works really well.

 

[KEW]

...background musical noise...

LOL - Good word choice!

 

[Chu Gai]

The Germans Were Pioneers In Headphone Development

 

[lsiberian]

It depends. If it's kids, it they usually go deaf in their teens and if you're talking about women, their hearing actually gets so much better that it seems like they can read a man's mind. Men, OTOH, seem to go deaf shortly after marriage.

Yeah my wife listens to loud music and still catches everything I say.

As far as the topic goes. Teens need to be educated and then allowed to choose for themselves.

 

[mtrycrafts]

.... Teens need to be educated and then allowed to choose for themselves.

You think most of them can understand the implications of early hearing loss?
If it is not right away that they can process, I doubt most will care about events in the future. Your thoughts?

 

[mtrycrafts]

.... Men, OTOH, seem to go deaf shortly after marriage.

That is understandable, no?

 

[highfigh]

That is understandable, no?

As Clint Eastwood said, while he was laying on the floor of the bus in 'The Gauntlet' with Sandra Locke yelling at him to not die, "Nag, nag, nag".

 

[yepimonfire]

I'd be proud of the MP3 format for it's generic storage capabilities- large amounts of speech or music using a small amount of space. As far as the quality, it's not great but for background musical noise or other programming, it works really well.

actually aside from not owning a physical copy MP3's coded above 256kbps are pretty transparent, half of my music collection is MP3's and they all sound perfectly fine played over my system, most of them are VBR from 192-320kbps. i hear absolutely no artifacts or real loss in sound q. lossy codecs are great when you follow a certain bitrate rule, for instance, dolby digital, honestly it sounds pretty good at 86kbps per channel, but, and yes i have done this, if you encode a song in AC3 at 64kbps per channel it sounds incredibly bad, masking removes sounds we literally cannot hear at high bitrates, at lower bitrates it begins removing more then that.

 

[Tarub]

Mmmeeeeooooowwww (sorry I can't hear you, the music is too loud)!!!!

 

[highfigh]

actually aside from not owning a physical copy MP3's coded above 256kbps are pretty transparent, half of my music collection is MP3's and they all sound perfectly fine played over my system, most of them are VBR from 192-320kbps. i hear absolutely no artifacts or real loss in sound q. lossy codecs are great when you follow a certain bitrate rule, for instance, dolby digital, honestly it sounds pretty good at 86kbps per channel, but, and yes i have done this, if you encode a song in AC3 at 64kbps per channel it sounds incredibly bad, masking removes sounds we literally cannot hear at high bitrates, at lower bitrates it begins removing more then that.

But even at the highest bit rate, it's not an exact copy and that's not 'high fidelity' in its truest sense. "Good enough for most people" isn't what we, as audio freaks, are looking for in recorded music. Like VHS, the lower quality version is the one everyone has been made to want, mainly because they were told that it's 'more'. An 8 hour VHS tape is definitely going to be more popular when the longest Beta was 5 hours but the quality was much worse and the added stress caused the tape to stretch, making it unwatchable at some point because it stretched along the edge where the synch track was located.

At some point, as I have posted many times, there has to be a time when we just listen to the music and not the equipment. That said, it's a lot more enjoyable when it sounds far above average, or even excellent.