Whether you suffer hearing loss from headphones depends on three things: how loud you listen to music, how long you listen, and what type of headphones you listen with.
Most MP3 players (such as the iPod) come with the earbud style headphones which are placed in the ear, will cause hearing loss faster than supra-aural headphones which rest on the outer ear.
The worst choice appears to be the headphones that isolate outside noise by fitting into the ear canal.
Played at no more than 50% of the maximum volume, none of the headphones appear to cause permanent hearing loss. You can even enjoy constant listening at those moderate levels.
Higher volumes bring the risk of damage, and then listening times also become a factor. If you are going to push the volume up, then you should limit how long you listen.
Recommendations: Find a good set of supra-aural headphones. I’m a fan of the Sennheiser PX 100 headphones. They are comfortable, light, and sound terrific. Most importantly, don’t play it so loud!
As impressive as a robot playing Giant Steps by John Coltrane might be, it has no soul. It’s clearly not human. We can appreciate the technical merits, however we cannot appreciate it musically. For that we need the real thing as played by a talented human being.
Likewise, while we can appreciate all of the things that computers and technology can do for us in life, but we must remember that they have no soul, and our souls require that we mingle with other souls in order to truly be happy and satisfied. As much as computers and technology play a role in helping us do our work or entertaining us, we need to unplug and just be human sometimes. If we don’t, then how can we be happy or satisfied?
The report said that those who listened for five hours a week at high-volume settings exposed themselves to more noise than permitted in the noisiest factory or work place. Maximum volume on some devices can generate as much noise as an airplane taking off nearby.
The study — from a team of nine specialists on the Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks — also warns that young people do not realize the damage until years later. (NYT)
Later in the eighties, I remember hearing or reading that Kerry Livgren (keyboardist/guitarist from Kansas) put out his own PSA of sorts warning of hearing loss and he spoke from personal experience:
A recent occurrence in my life has compelled me to write this letter. It concerns a subject that is relevant to everyone — our sense of hearing.
I have been a professional musician since 1965. I spent years playing in clubs, schools, and all the other types of gigs that musicians do, not counting the myriad hours spent in rehearsals. As the
guitarist-keyboardist for Kansas, I have recorded ten albums with that group, two solo albums, and three more albums with the group A.D. In addition to all that studio time, my ears logged thousands of hours of high-decibel concerts, sound checks, etc., over fourteen years of touring.
I recently completed recording my first instrumental project for Sparrow records, and I was schedules to master it in Nashville. The night before my mastering date I was rudely awakened at 3 a.m. by a loud ringing in my right year. I had experienced something like this before, but never at so alarming a level. It was still there in the morning, so I had to rely on the ears of other engineers and friends at the mastering facility.
When I got home, I went through a battery of tests with doctors and audiologists who told me what I suspected anyway: noise-induced hearing loss. Even though for the last several years I have been monitoring at very conservative levels, my ears seem to have been seriously affected, and the prognosis for this type of damage to one’s hearing is not very encouraging.
Little or nothing can be done about it. Unfortunately, our lives do not have an “Undo” command. If I had one, I would most certainly use it, for in retrospect all those wonderful decibels that were so exciting at the time were destroying the very means I had of perceiving them. Now my career, and other areas of my life, are in question, for deafness destroys a great deal more than just the enjoyment of music. All of these wonderful toys we read about in this publication [Electronic Musician] become scrap metal without a God-given ear to hear them with.
It’s not worth it, my friends. Rock and roll takes its toll. I wish I had listened to my dad in 1965 when he opened the garage door and yelled: “Can’t you turn it down and still enjoy it?”
The concerns about Families and Technology extend beyond this blog. SoftwareTime is a company founded on the idea that technology affects families in many ways. Balance and responsible use of technologies is important. SoftwareTime's products will help.
