I have met a few people that say that loud music doesn’t affect their hearing? What, besides a genuine high tolerance for high sound pressure levels, would account for this? Are they full of crap, or are they revising downward their definition of “loud”?
If by “tolerate” you mean their subjective sense of whether they feel pain or annoyance at a particular loudness of noise, then yes, people’s tolerances do differ.
But the innards of any one human ear are about the same as any other and they’ll get injured at about the same rate from the same stimulus. The key is that hearing damage is slow & cumulative. You can be exposed to damaging noise for many months with no apparent effect. And then the hearing loss begins, gradually, and as you start to lose function you think you’re tolerating noise even better, even as the damage is accelerating. Subjectively, it feels fine. An onjective test will show a lot of damage before the ear’s owner notices anything has changed.
Loud music doesn’t bother me so much because I’ve lost alot of hearing listening to loud music, shooting guns, going to races and in lots of other ways just abusing my senses.
I’ve had fun.
What?
I had to say it.
Hearing loss from chronic exposure to noise is a subtle thing. Those that say loud music doesn’t bother them are telling the truth. Thay have already lost the enough that it doesn’t sound as loud to them because it isn’t. The part of their hearing that goes first is in the range they’ve been exposed to. Pre-hospital emergency workers, Medics, firefighters, police lose mid range, from the sirens. The people that are exposed to jet engines, chronicly, lose high range. Musicians lose a bit of everything, since music spans the scale.
They’re revising their definition of loud upward. What makes your ears bleed, they tolerate, because they don’t hear all of it.
The correlation between exposure to given decibel level, and the amount of damage it will cause over a given time is well established.
80 Dbs is the occupational limit value set by OSHA. That’s about how loud the horn on your car is. Anything louder will eventually cause problems. I’ve simplified some, the standard is a pretty complicated formula taking into account Db level, pitch and frequency, age of the person, enviroment. This is only about chronic exposure. There are other factors at play with episodic exposure to very high levels.
Hope this helped.
I’d say as a teenager I preferred my music much louder than I do now. In fact, I found it difficult to sleep without music, and in college, I pretty much enjoyed sleeping with some sort of punk/techno music blaring in my ears. I slept better that way.
Nowadays, I usually prefer it quiet. Occasionally I’ll leave music playing or have some environmental sounds going or something, but it’s at a low volume.
My roommate is the opposite. He not only likes noise, he requires it. He has to have music and/or multiple TVs going at all times. If you turn off the stereo and TVs he will immediately start singing to himself or loudly slapping out a tune on his thighs.
I’d say noise tolerance is more psychological than an actual physical thing.
Yup. How old are they? They may like their Slipknot loud but I bet they wouldn’t tolerate equally loud Stockhausen. I was young once, and a one sign of a good gig was that you couldn’t hear yourself talk afterwards over the ringing in your ears. As a consequence of a particularly loud lifestyle (I ran a sound system for a few years and played in rock bands) I now have some tinnitus, and the top end of my hearing is not what it used to be.
There’s a scene in the Who film (The Kids are Alright?) where Pete Townshend said he asked a doctor what he could do about his hearing loss.
Doc says: Learn to lip-read.
As someone who enjoys loud music from time to time, I’d like to point out the difference between “annoyingly” loud and “earsplitting” loud.
In highschool my mom would complain if she could hear my music in the next room with the door closed. This is not a particularly high level of volume. I felt no pain, or ringing in my ears. I need ear plugs to mow the lawn, so its not like I have extremely high tolerance for loud noises. Just because you can hear some base thumping from the trunk of a random honda civic does not mean that its dangerous inside that car.
Having said that, some people, especially the kind in their late teens/early 20’s think their hearing is invincible. Some people I know have car stereo’s in the 110-120 dB range. This is not safe for your hearing.
I don’t know where I’m going with this. I’d just like some recognition that there is significant grey area between a “loud” “annoying” volume level and a volume level that causes significant damage to your ears.
Maybe I’m just imagining it but I could have sworn I’ve read recently that damage from loud noises is really vastly overblown (ala the supposed dangers of sitting too close to the television set.)
A complication as to what is bearably loud is distortion. Some people are definitely more sensitive to disrtortion and interpret that as being “loud” although the SPL***** isn’t very high. For my days running a PA rig I know that you can go up to very high SPLs and if the system is clean then it certainly sounds (and feels) loud, but it doesn’t hurt your ears like an overdriven system one tenth the power.
*****Sound Pressure Level
On a related note, does anyone know where I can get an inexpensive noise level meter? I don’t need it to be super-precise or anything, just a general ballpark is good enough. I tried Googling “decibel meter” and got something for police use (among other things) that is ~$375. That’s a bit steep, I was hoping for something that was MAYBE 10% that much.
There is a phenomenon known as “threshold shift” in which you become accustomed to elevated sound volumes, and in fact perceive the sound as being less loud than it actually is. You can demonstrate this by driving in a car with a sound system - put on some tunes you like, and turn it up - you might find yourself periodically bumping up the volume to maintain a level that sounds “cranked” to you. Now stop somewhere for coffee, in a quiet place mostly devoid of traffic, and read a newspaper for fifteen or twenty minutes. Get back in your car and guess what? You’ll find yourself turning the volume down from where it was.
As for tolerance, there is a large psychological component to this as others have mentioned, but it depends largely on the type of sound. For me personally, I probably have some hearing loss, as I like to listen to music at elevated volumes for extended periods (I’m a heavy metal fan, and attended several concerts in my youth). I find that I have no problem with loud music, and yet, if I attend a crowded space such as a mall (and I’m thinking of yesterday as an example - the day before Christmas, so it was incredibly busy) the constant din of voices, ambient music, cash registers. HVAC noise, and all of the other sounds I found just about unbearable, and had to put in earplugs. I suspect the actual decibel level of that noise was much lower than the music I listen to.
Yes. I am the opposite case.
I think noise sensitivity is at least partially individual. I am sensitive to loud noise, even at “acceptable” levels, it makes me irritable and grumpy.
As a work requirement, I get bi-annual hearing tests (sound-o-grams?) and consistently register at or beyond the threshold of human hearing (It’s my super-power: good ears.)
I have done significant renovations to three houses and still blink every time a hammer hits a nail.
kdeus