Sound and vision.

Well, I am trying to kill my Facebook account. But it seems to be that bureaucracy has spread to the internet and it takes a letter (with three copies) and a two weeks wait (for a more accurate description on how to get rid of your facebook account go here the How to erase your facebook profile and a nice article at Wired).

Since I am no longer restrained to "What's on your mind?" I want to write about some things I being playing with. Specifically, listening to music.

Why? Well, I love music. I love listening to it, singing it and, in a very literal way, "feeling" the music.

So I want to blog about four topics:

Listening as "I go"

Listening/feeling at home

What I listen to (in terms of format and/or equipment)

And noise (or, sometimes called, ipod-induced) induced hearing loss.

Since I believe the most important topic is the last one I am going to start right there. The other three will be tackled in following blog posts.

They are more than enough websites that discuss what noise is (http://www.asha.org/public/hearing/disorders/noise.htm) from the engineering and psychoacoustical points of view. Without judging musical taste it is a fact that if we listen long enough to loud sounds (noises or music) our hearing capabilities decline.

So how loud is too loud?

Well, since exposure to loud noise is an occupational hazard there are regulation setup for that. For example, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA, http://www.osha.gov) suggests a permissible exposure of 8 hours to a 90 dB noise while only a 2 hour exposure to a 100 dB noise. Of course, I find 70-80 dB more than annoying for more than a few hours (how do I estimate those numbers? I run Sound Level Free on my iPhone). I rather be at or below 50.

Now, for regular speaker-based music listening loudness is relatively easy to measure. For example, using the iPhone app I mentioned above (deciBel seems to be the equivalent for Android). But what about earphones?

In these iPod toting days is quite common to run into someone using earphones open enough with the volume high enough that anyone can listen to his/her music. That is obviously bad for her/his hearing! In that sense getting a good pair of earphones can help a lot. I am not talking about expensive earphones like the Shure SE530 or crazy expensive ones like the Sennheiser HD 800. I am actually talking about moving away from the cheap Apple earphones to something that can be had from $30 bucks (Sennheiser CX300). From personal experience, using this Sennheiser CX300 I can listen to music at the minimum my iPod (5G with video) can supply even in environments with 70 dB of ambient noise. The same is true when I use my iPhone.

Again, I am not saying that you need to buy new earphones. I am just saying the noise blocking earphones can help you limit the volume at which you listen to your favorite music.

Now to address how high the volume on your iPod compares to the noise scale I want to mention this website I found a few weeks back: Generation Deaf. It has a very useful table that draws a scale based on the parcentage of the maximum volume level on your iPod to the time you can (safely) listen. For example, if you use a volume level between 10 to 50% you can listen to your iPod without anytime limit. But, if you go up to 70% the time drops to 4.6 hours.

I do find the "no limit" time a bit exaggerated but it makes me comfortable since I can go with the minimum volume I can get from the iPod. And, my listening sessions are of about 4-6 hours a day.

Besides getting a good set of earphones there is the fact that most iPods allow you to "limit" the maximum volume output. Mine is setup in such a way that I cannot go beyond 50% of the maximum volume. This makes it extra safe since I cannot we deafening volumes, not accidentally nor intentionally.

Bottom line is: you want to enjoy your favorite music for years to come you have to lower that volume. If you get yourself good earphones you can do so drastically.