It is no secret that prolonged exposure to loud sound is highly damaging to our hearing. Listening to loud music is one of the common factors leading to degraded hearing ability and tinnitus, and is deeply unhealthy.
At the same time, such level of noise negatively impacts the quality of sound perception, which degrades the musical side of the musical performance.
In what seems to be the echoes of the so-called “loudness war”, bands still stick to the idea that “the louder you blast it - the better”. But it’s not true. There are many other ways to energize the crowd without causing them sound damage, and I’d love to see more of those, instead of them trying to be the loudest ever.
Allow me to piggyback on to this post:
If you ride a motorcycle, you should be wearing earplugs. It’s not the engine noise, it’s the wind noise, even inside a good helmet. Yes, you will still be able to use your helmet intercom/headset. I recommend the silicone ear plugs with the tiny hard plastic insert, both for comfort (because they sit very flush) and headset (I can hear my headset perfectly).
Yes, you will still be able to use your helmet intercom/headset.
Earplugs will actually significantly improve your experience. It’s much easier to hear everything without the constant wind noise.
When I used “regular” foam earplugs, I could only really use the headset under 70MPH. With the “filtered” ones, I can use it at literally any speed.
I also bought a bag of 1000 solid silicone earplugs with string tethers, mainly to throw at my son and his musician friends playing hardcore in the basement, but also to keep some with me on the bike all the time and hand them out to anyone who needs them.
If I stick my watch arm out the window while driving, my watch warns me that I’m in a loud environment that could damage my hearing.
To be fair your car is concentrating a lot of wind right outside the window so it will artificially read higher. Plus your ears are like 80 degrees away from the wind flow vs your watches mic that’s probably getting fucked by the wind. If you ever stick your head out the window ear facing forward that shits LOUD.
Even with my watch inside the car when I’m driving my little Miata with the top down my watch gives me the loud noise notification. Granted I do also have my speakers turned up pretty loud to hear anything over the wind.
I’m not a motorcycle driver, but doesn’t it lessen your situational awareness? Genuine question.
In my experience, you situational awareness is better, because all sounds are turned down, you can still hear everything, it’s just not as loud. Most of these attenuate the frequencies where the wind noise is more than the rest, which also helps.
The main reason why I say your awareness is better though, is that you have less fatigue when you aren’t constantly exposed to loud noise while riding, again in my experience.
The helmet you have also makes a huge difference, just like the bike. On a naked bike you’ll have more wind noise, whereas on a touring bike with a large windscreen, it’s mainly engine noise.
I second this. It’s absolutely nerve wracking to have that wind blasting while riding. With ear plugs there’s a feeling of calm combined with the joy of riding that can not be put into words. Damn I need to get another bike. I could use some of that in my life right now.
This gets into some funny spaces. Your ears can only handle “so loud” before things start going weird. Muscles start tensing up to attenuate the noise. The shape of your ear canals will funnel sound so your hairs in your inner ear stop hearing and just report noise.
Turning down the overall volume, lets you hear more, because more of the sound is in your range of acceptable volumes. I’m more aware of what’s going on with earplugs in, because I’m able to hear things like the tire noise of a nearby car, or the cooling fans of a semi.
This is the same reason wearing earplugs at concerts makes the music sound better. :-)
I know it’s illegal to wear headphones with music while driving. Wonder if earplugs also?
It’s different for motorcycles, since your head is in the wind.
As for wearing headphones while driving a car (in the US), it depends on the state, and most states have no prohibition on it.
https://www.vlaw.com/is-it-illegal-to-wear-headphones-while-driving/
Not a lot of information about earplugs, but I did find this:
https://www.thewisedrive.com/driving-with-earplugs/
I can definitely see where wearing earplugs while driving a car could be problematic, because you can roll the windows up, and I would expect that your ability to hear emergency vehicles would be hampered while wearing earplugs in a closed car.
On the other hand, hearing impaired people - including those who are wholly deaf - drive legally all the time, so I’m not entirely sure where earplugs would land.
In other news, in most states it is perfectly legal to drive naked as long as you’re not exposing yourself to minors. This includes not wearing shoes.
Could not agree more. I love the idea of live music but in practice it’s a miserable experience unless you’ve already suffered significant hearing loss.
Maybe someday people will stop putting up with this and I’ll be able to enjoy it but this idea seems a long way away.
I’d sooooo much love to go to concerts more once they are quieter!
This would make it so so much of a better experience
I’m a music producer and there is/was a “Loudness War” and several people say loud won. To clarify: for your tracks to qualify when uploading them to Spotify I believe they have to be a minimum of -10 LUFS. I’m not going to pretend that I know what a LUFS is fully, but I have software to tell me where my LUFS is at. If you don’t hit at least -10 LUFS they will fake it for you, with usually terrible results.
So now all producers are mixing to -10 LUFS and higher (-8 or -9), all for the sake of possibly getting radio play in the future, although not all music sounds good when mixed so damn loudly. I know this is tangentially related but
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’m taking live sound classes at my community college right now and we talked about this yesterday. The biggest issue with a large venue packed with people is the noise floor is very high. For instance if the crowd is 90db, then you’ve only got 10-20db of headroom to work with. 90db is already enough to cause hearing damage after 8 hours, and it gets exponentially worse with just a few db more, by 100 you can only safely be in that for 2 hours and that is generally the ideal loudness for that kind of venue. Of course since the engineers probably have hearing loss, they tend to raise it even higher to 110 which is loud enough to still cause damage over time even with regular earbuds unfortunately. So unless you can have a quiet crowd there is nothing you can do about needing ear protection, I recommend hanging by the engineer booth because they tend to be just far enough away to comfortably hear everything around 90db because they generally can’t use earbuds while actively mixing.
Protect your hearing.
I did not and today, at the age of 54, I cannot hear above 13khz when I used to be able to hear above 20khz. Part of that is age, but most of it is from not using hearing protection at concerts and other activities where I should have been using it.
Any constant noise above 80db will damage your hearing. 80db is a LOT quieter than you think it is.
most of it is from not using hearing protection at concerts and other activities where I should have been using it.
You mean like firing a pistol in an elevator?
Went to a local rock concert once. Had to go into the middle of the crowd to fetch a friend and alert him of something that had happened. The music was unbearably loud for me. Noticed that virtually everyone was wearing ear plugs.
Found it absurd. Why not lower the volume instead and have people forego the plugs? Less noise pollution in the local area too. After the concert was over I asked some participants about it. Everyone claimed they liked the loudness or that it was necessary somehow. My impression: they liked to keep up with the appearances of being hardcore, it being for tough folks. But they didn’t want the actual hearing damage.
Found it absurd. Why not lower the volume instead and have people forego the plugs?
Some people like to be able to feel the music. I have been at music concerts with deaf people who were enjoying the shit out of it.
Exactly. I’m there to lose myself in the crowd and to feel the music. Being right up near the amps makes me feel alive. Every bass drum beat feels like it’s kicking you in the chest, every time the pyros go off you feel the heat on your face, mosh pits open up spontaneously around you, it’s some of the most fun I’ve ever had. If I just want to listen to the band I’ll stay home and put an album on, save myself a hundred bucks.
