Safe listening levels

[BingoFishy]

Whenever I see things that say "don't listen to music that's too loud" they'll always recommend you keep your music below 60% for one hour or something stupid like that, when it all depends on your audio equipment (headphones, source, etc.) Does anyone know of a good way to determine if you are at safe listening levels? 

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, BingoFishy said:

Whenever I see things that say "don't listen to music that's too loud" they'll always recommend you keep your music below 60% for one hour or something stupid like that, when it all depends on your audio equipment (headphones, source, etc.) Does anyone know of a good way to determine if you are at safe listening levels? 

My method: Lowest usable level possible

[GarnetDevil]

Put your volume to the highest and start listening for about 30 minutes to 1 hours, while gradually decreasing it to the point where you feel most comfortable, then at that same level listen to another 1 or 2 hours

[vorticalbox]

9 minutes ago, GarnetDevil said:

Put your volume to the highest and start listening for about 30 minutes to 1 hours, while gradually decreasing it to the point where you feel most comfortable, then at that same level listen to another 1 or 2 hours

pretty sure starting at the highest is a good way to ruin your hearing.

 

[GarnetDevil]

1 minute ago, vorticalbox said:

pretty sure starting at the highest is a good way to ruin your hearing.

 

Well it didn't cause any problem for me cos I usually listen to maximum volume while working out, when I listen at home I'd start at round 60% (On my Note 4)

You can from bottom up too I think

[GlassBomb]

13 minutes ago, GarnetDevil said:

Put your volume to the highest and start listening for about 30 minutes to 1 hours, while gradually decreasing it to the point where you feel most comfortable, then at that same level listen to another 1 or 2 hours

That'd ruin many people's hearing, and headphones. If I listened to my headphones at 100% volume, then my hearing would be instantly gone, and my $500 headphones would be, too.

 

With the setup that I am using, then 10% is very listen-able levels. 20% is loud. And 50% isn't bearable for longer than just a short moment. And this is at low gain. With high gain, then I don't dare take it above 20%, which is louder than 50% on low gain.

[GarnetDevil]

1 minute ago, GlassBomb said:

That'd ruin many people's hearing, and headphones. If I listened to my headphones at 100% volume, then my hearing would be instantly gone, and my $500 headphones would be, too.

 

With the setup that I am using, then 10% is very listen-able levels. 20% is loud. And 50% isn't bearable for longer than just a short moment. And this is at low gain. With high gain, then I don't dare take it above 20%, which is louder than 50% on low gain.

Because I'm using a Piston 3.0 so I can hear at that level

But for others, yeah that will be a very bad idea

[porina]

Unfortunately it is difficult to advise on safe levels based on settings as it will vary on the devices used.

 

n Europe, there is a requirement on levels from "portable music players". This is split into parts but the effect is the same. Compliant players and headphones will as standard give a limited output level that is considered safe. If you see a warning pop up on screen about high listening levels, that is the facility for them to allow a user override to listen at higher levels. However, if your system never gives you a warning, that doesn't mean it is safe, as it might be they never implemented this particularly if you're outside Europe.

 

It's been a while since I looked at this so I don't recall the exact limits, but I think the overall system maximum level is 100 dBA average after override, assuming both player and headphones are the "loudest" allowable. If you have low sensitivity headphones then you might need to use higher volume settings and trigger the warning, as that assumes a high sensitivity.

 

For noise at work the recommended daily exposure is 80 dBA for 8 hours, halving in duration for every 3 dB increase. That is the noise dose considered to not to significantly increase your risk of long term hearing loss if kept to. 

 

As a rough guideline, if you find your hearing to be less sensitive than normal after listening to music, you might want to turn it down a bit more next time.

[GlassBomb]

2 minutes ago, GarnetDevil said:

Because I'm using a Piston 3.0 so I can hear at that level

But for others, yeah that will be a very bad idea

The main issue is what someone is using to power their headphones, or whatever they are listening with. Many mobile devices can't drive headphones anywhere near as loud as a proper AMP will. Though, low-powered headphones can still be deafening when powered off a mobile device.

 

When I power my desktop headphones from my phone, then I around 30~35% is similar-ish to 10% on my desktop. 100% on the phone is still unbearable. I'd say that the phone's volume is around 1/3rd of what my desktop is. And hell, even just the first notch on my phone is enough to power my headphones to a reasonable level if it's quiet in my room.

 

I always suggest starting low, and working your way up. 

[themctipers]

1 hour ago, porina said:

Unfortunately it is difficult to advise on safe levels based on settings as it will vary on the devices used.

 

n Europe, there is a requirement on levels from "portable music players". This is split into parts but the effect is the same. Compliant players and headphones will as standard give a limited output level that is considered safe. If you see a warning pop up on screen about high listening levels, that is the facility for them to allow a user override to listen at higher levels. However, if your system never gives you a warning, that doesn't mean it is safe, as it might be they never implemented this particularly if you're outside Europe.

 

It's been a while since I looked at this so I don't recall the exact limits, but I think the overall system maximum level is 100 dBA average after override, assuming both player and headphones are the "loudest" allowable. If you have low sensitivity headphones then you might need to use higher volume settings and trigger the warning, as that assumes a high sensitivity.

 

For noise at work the recommended daily exposure is 80 dBA for 8 hours, halving in duration for every 3 dB increase. That is the noise dose considered to not to significantly increase your risk of long term hearing loss if kept to. 

 

As a rough guideline, if you find your hearing to be less sensitive than normal after listening to music, you might want to turn it down a bit more next time.

So thats why my note 5 from hong kong has a warning..

[Guest]

Blah blah blah. I'm not sure why so much has been written in this thread when the answer is very simple.

 

Get an SPL meter if you really care, and get your hearing checked regularly by a professional.

[porina]

1 minute ago, SSL said:

Blah blah blah. I'm not sure why so much has been written in this thread when the answer is very simple.

 

Get an SPL meter if you really care, and get your hearing checked regularly by a professional.

A cheap sound level meter will not give you a meaningful measurement from headphones, as it wont interact with them the same way your ear will.

[Guest]

Just now, porina said:

A cheap sound level meter will not give you a meaningful measurement from headphones, as it wont interact with them the same way your ear will.

 

It'll be close enough. In any case, there is no other method that is even as remotely as reliable, so all this pontificating is pointless.

[porina]

1 minute ago, SSL said:

It'll be close enough. In any case, there is no other method that is even as remotely as reliable, so all this pontificating is pointless.

It wont be close enough, unless your definition of "close enough" is pick a random number as you might as well do that. By moving it closer or further you can pretty much get any number you like.

 

There are two recognised methods to do this properly, and I will admit neither are really practical for normal people due to equipment requirements. One is to use an anatomically representative artificial ear. A low cost one will run into the thousands of £/$ and wont include the sound level meter. The other is to put a probe microphone into the ear canal, which I wouldn't want to attempt without proper training.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, porina said:

It wont be close enough, unless your definition of "close enough" is pick a random number as you might as well do that. By moving it closer or further you can pretty much get any number you like.

 

Then don't do that.

[porina]

2 minutes ago, SSL said:

Then don't do that.

Then how far should it be? Touching? There is no right place.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, porina said:

Then how far should it be? Touching? There is no right place.

 

Wherever your ear is, obviously.

[porina]

1 minute ago, SSL said:

Wherever your ear is, obviously.

I think we're at a point where words are not adequate. Doing these measurements are my day job. It will be easier for me to get some photos at work tomorrow.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, porina said:

I think we're at a point where words are not adequate. Doing these measurements are my day job. It will be easier for me to get some photos at work tomorrow.

 

Be my guest. I'd like to see your setup.

[porina]

22 hours ago, SSL said:

Be my guest. I'd like to see your setup.

Meet my friend at work, sporting the Wan Show hoodie. Looks better than I do in it... We never named him, but just refer to him generically as HATS, short for Head And Torso Simulator. The clue is in the name.

 

There are two active parts: an artificial mouth, and artificial ear. Here we're more interest in the latter. What's in there?

 

Here's a close up of the outer part of the ear (pinna). It is ear shaped, and is of a representative softness. You can see a hole which forms the ear canal. Of course, actual human ears come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and it would be impractical to represent them all, so this is a standard one.

 

Removing the outer part we reveal the microphone in the head, which is positioned where the ear drum would be. This is known as the ear-Drum Reference Point (DRP). It should be noted that sound levels here will be different than outside the ear due to the influence of the ear. This difference is not constant with frequency due to the shape of the ear, and is also affected by the direction. Maybe less important for headphones. Common sound level measurements are given as open measurements, so a frequency dependant transfer function is applied. 

 

Here I have shown two different sound level meters. Note they don't vaguely resemble an ear. What's the right position to measure at? You might say, you can use them to measure sound in a room, for example, from speakers right? Yes... but the difference is that a room measurement is relatively far from the sound source. In an open space, so ignoring reflections for now, sound levels drop 6 dB for every doubling of distance. When you're relatively far from the source, this doesn't have much impact. With headphones, you can't be far away, and have to remain close. But how close? Even small variations in positioning will result in large changes in level. And this doesn't even consider it will be impacted by acoustic impedance and leakage, which will also vary with frequency.

 

Low end sound level meters like those pictured will struggle with measuring music levels anyway. The level is constantly changing, and in the low end you'll be lucky to have more than "fast" or "slow" time constants. This alters the speed at which the reading reacts. Higher feature models will have an "equivalent continuous" level mode, let's call it an averaging mode, which will help a lot.

 

Random comment while I'm at it... I have previously tested a bunch of sound level meter type apps on iphones. The best free one was from Logitech (I don't work for Logitech). It used to be called their ultimate ears app but I think it has changed name more recently. I'm not an iOS user so I'm not up to date in this. It wasn't bad and you can do a lot worse, free or paid for. Still wouldn't use it for trying to measure headphones!

 

Similar situation with ear bud types. Maybe even worse...

 

With an artificial ear, we do have a representative and repeatable mounting point. Even then, it isn't perfect. As mentioned before, actual ears will vary from person to person. Also, positioning of the headphones can still make a difference.

 

Ok, this doesn't help the original post on what is a safe listening level, but I hope it shows why you shouldn't use a sound level meter to try and measure it. I'm unlikely to have time to demonstrate this with actual measurements any time soon, but will try to answer any further questions.

[spwath]

Wow @porina that's really interesting.

Just currious, what does the mouth do?

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, porina said:

le snip

 

Thanks, interesting. You appear to know what you're talking about; normally I would in fact demand actual measurements as the proof is in the pudding. I would expect that an SPL meter would be best used with a plate coupler of some kind, both to maintain a consistent distance and to ensure a proper seal.

 

The point here really is that there isn't a substitute for proper measurement. Rules of thumb like "no more than 60%" volume don't take into account equipment variation.

 

3 minutes ago, spwath said:

Just currious, what does the mouth do?

 

top kek?

[porina]

53 minutes ago, spwath said:

Wow @porina that's really interesting.

Just currious, what does the mouth do?

Makes a noise HATS I think was built around telephony applications, so you can test things with a receiver and mic, but their usage has gone beyond that. The mouth is designed so that sound spreads around it in a similar way to a person's head. Again, there will be different mouth and head shapes and sized in humans so it wont represent everyone.

50 minutes ago, SSL said:

Thanks, interesting. You appear to know what you're talking about; normally I would in fact demand actual measurements as the proof is in the pudding. I would expect that an SPL meter would be best used with a plate coupler of some kind, both to maintain a consistent distance and to ensure a proper seal.

Thinking more, for curcumaural headphones you could get away with something called a simplified pinna simulator. Basically the same sort of thing with less ear detail, but it doesn't really save you any meaningful amount of cost. For headphones that seal to the ear canal, another type of ear simulator could suffice, which is also used for testing hearing aids for example. But this is certainly a "use the right tool for the job" situation.

50 minutes ago, SSL said:

The point here really is that there isn't a substitute for proper measurement. Rules of thumb like "no more than 60%" volume don't take into account equipment variation.

If your player does offer the loud level warning, also assuming you have headphones compliant with the same standards, then you can say the levels will be what's considered safe if you don't override the limit. It could be lower than necessary, but it wont be higher.

 

Otherwise, best you can do is keep it practically low. If you start noticing a short term change in hearing sensitivity, take that as a warning sign. Unless you get to silly sound levels, hearing loss from loud noise will be a very gradual effect and will add up over the years. Some hearing loss is normal with age, and you don't want to speed that up.