Is Generation Y going deaf?

Abuse it, and you'll lose it.

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

When I can hear a teenager's headphones through the din of a NYC subway car, I know he's on his way.

If I'm sitting a good 10 feet away from him and can still hear the screech of his headphones, I know the kid is killing his ears. Sure, I'm sometimes tempted to say something, but I never do. He's not really bothering anybody. And if he wants to be stone deaf by the time he's 30, well, it's his life.

But does he know that day by day he's doing irreparable harm? There's no cure for deafness, just hearing aids.

This blog was inspired by Audiophiliac reader Alegr, who supplied the following quote:

"Generation Y, whose hearing is impaired by in-ear headphone abuse, is finally unable to hear vinyl's noises, distortion, and limited frequency response. Which are worse than a 128 kbps MP3."

You think? People have different sensitivities to different types of distortion. To my ears vinyl distortions are less annoying than MP3 haze. In any case I'd hope any Gen Y-er listening to vinyl has some consciousness of sound quality and wouldn't abuse their ears.

If you regularly experience "ringing" in the ears, that's not a good sign. Take heed or suffer the consequences. If you want to see (or hear) where you stand right now, check out my blog covering a do-it-yourself hearing test CD.

[praveen_kharb]

I cannot agree more with Steve. I am 32 years old and suffer from high tone hearing loss. This means that I fail to hear sharp sounds like some mobile ring tones and finer sounds in music. It gets very frustrating many times and there is no way that I would want wear a hearing aid. But in my case the cause was different. I have spent about 7 years in the Army and the result of firing automatic rifles in target practice without ear protection caused this. When the real action was there of course I did not have a choice but I could have exercised more precaution during target practice. It is also unfortunate that in the Army that I served, wearing ear protection during target practice is discouraged and looked down upon as something that only the weak would do.

The rules are the same here - extended periods of listening to headphones at loud volumes will damage your hearing capability over the years and like Steve said the damage is reversible. Its only when you lose it do you realize what you have lost. Be smarter!

[blankexpression]

Some of you probably aren't old enough to remember but the "experts" said the same thing about Walkman® users over 20 years ago! And guess what? We all survived with our hearing in tact. Amazing! And I guarantee you that then next time someone invents a gadget based around close-range, personal speakers like ear buds, another expert will sound the alarm. The truth is some young people are always going to listen to music that's too loud -- no matter what device it's coming from.

That being said, I started wearing ear plugs to concerts over 10 years ago. I have probably seen hundreds of rock shows, stadium shows, club gigs, etc. in my life not to mention all of the hours I spent on loud, pulsing dance floors and I knew that if I wanted to protect my hearing from any further damage then I would need to start wearing ear plugs. I've recently seen Steely Dan, The Cure, The Police, and Elvis Costello, and...I can still hear the music just fine!

[praveen_kharb]

My apologies for uploading the same comment many times. I do not know how to remove them. And yes there is a typo too - please read irreversible in place of reversible. (Editors' note: redundant comments have been deleted.)

[Wookiee-1138]

The thing is, even at full volume they can still hear parents nagging. So that must be even more damaging.

[M C]

LOL on using a really poorly informed slam on LPs (with bonus bad grammar) as a basis for a blog post.

I consider this my CNET "morning funny."

[Perry_Clease]

Hearing sound coming from someone's earbuds when they are 10' away is one thing. Your windows rattling from someone's automobile sound system bumping bass from 40' away is another, what kind of hearing damage is being done with to that person.

[onlyauser]

I have injured my hearing even at lower sounds. I had to stop listing with headgear. Now the constant buzzing has been reduced. I regret using earbuds at all. They are dangerous to your hearing by design a fact that is indisputable. If you did not 'HEAR' the point of this article then you could have damaged hearing also.

[jture]

Aside from the damage people are doing to their ears listening to their music turned up high enough for someone ten feet away to hear it - whatever happened to the "personal" part of "personal stereo"? I don't want to hear your music, ten inches or ten feet away. Turn the blasted thing down!

[wollytech]

The key words here is "long-term exposure" at high volume... stop jumping to conclusion just because you can hear someone's music from a distance. You don't know that person's habits, he/she is just trying to tune out the equally noise world we are living in.

[sray001]

wollytech, The habit of cranking the volume to drown out the "equally noisy world we are living in" will result in hearing loss. I used to do the same thing when I would cut the grass, just an hour at a time once a week. Fast forward just a few years and I hear a constant ringing in both ears called tinnitus. Now it doesn't matter how quiet the environment is, I still hear my own background noise. It will creep up on you in small stages until the day you realize the batteries aren't low in your player or you walk into a quiet environment and wonder what that sound is. Perhaps you'll wonder why all of your music sounds so dull and muddy at lower volume in a quiet room.

Ever since, I swear by noise cancelling headphones at all times, which is only going to prevent more damage and too late to stop the ringing. I certainly didn't plan on damaging my own hearing, I just wanted to enjoy my music. It doesn't matter now. I made a choice in small steps and I'm still paying for it.

[dragonbite]

Not quite all of us. I have a permanent low-level ringing in my ears and playing music too loud while younger is the only thing I can contribute it to.

Baiscally, if you are in a quiet room and you still hear some ringing, it's permanent hearing damage and that's what I've got.

[dragonbite]

(sorry.. this was supposed to be a reply to another comment)

[SomeAudioGuy]

I think there is a difference in use between modern MP3 players and walkmans from the 80's.
Tape players had built in stop points. Tapes would have to be flipped or changed out, Fast forwarding and rewinding were the bane of my existence, and batteries would always fail right around my favorite song. You could never really expose your ears to constant sound for more than an hour at a time. Tiny breaks were built in all over the place. Move on to today's MP3 players, and my fave playlist lasts longer than the battery life of my Nano (about 5 hours). It never needs to stop, ever. I can bombard my ears for a third of my waking day without interruption.

Add that to the HORRIBLE dimestore crap earbuds that are usually included (I'm disgusted by how many of my friends just couldn't be bothered to look at other headphones. Apple included these white ones so they MUST be good. Oh Sure, when they listen to my Nano with high bit rate MP3s and my Senny CX500's, they always comment on how good it sounds, but then I can ONLY fit 500 songs on my Nano not the 1000 Apple says you can fit, and what the crap is up with THAT?!?! Apple used to say 5GB = 1000 songs, now they say 4GB = 1000 songs??? That ONLY works with a TWENTY PERCENT REDUCTION in bit rate!!!), and you've pretty much got a recipe for hearing loss disaster...

[Galaxy5]

Hunh?

[alegr]

Alegr is back here :). Now that I turned 45 you can call me old geezer.

One could think his/her hearing is just OK. Unless you run a test. Or start wondering why the music sounds so strange in some particular passages. I've noticed some drop in mid range; I suspect it's caused by prolonged motorboat travels when I was a kid.

I've had my share of LPs, went through a few turntables, first crappy ones, later a decent one. I still keep one in a closet, with somewhat decent pickup which has an ellyptic-shaped oriented diamond stylus (neeedle), 1g nominal force, skatinge force compensated-tonearm. I've got a decent preamp and power amplifier made in 1990, but they are 220V and I don't want to haul a 110V->220 transformer around. The speakers have titanium foil dome midrange driver and tweeter, and bass driver with titanium foam diaphragm; I'm still using those, though I have to feed them from a half-decent Pioneer receiver, which is noticeably worse than my old amplifier.

Getting LPs to sound decent has always been a bane for me. We've had moving magnet and moving coil pickups available at the stores in Soviet Union, but some were made at a factory not known for quality; those were quite bad. Better ones were hard to find, until 1990s. As a result, LPs were getting worn soon. Don't want to remember piezo pickup, those required at least 7 g of weight and were thus very harsh on the vinyl.

Another unfortunate artifact of LPs was that as you clean them, they tend to acquire static charge. Which then discharges onto the stylus, leading to constants clicks. I fashioned a piece of foil to the cartridge, to gather the charge safely. Of course, the foil didn't touch the disk; there was about 0.5 mm clearance. This helped a bit.

[alegr]

Oh, and joys of cleaning paper dust (of the paper sleeve) off the groove!

[DaveOCP]

Constant ringing in the ears is a medical condition knows as Tinnitus. When the tiny hair cells that convert sound waves to electrical signals are damaged or destroyed by loud noises, the brain compensates by increasing sensitivity to these signals, causing ringing. The hair cells do not grow back. Once you lose them, they're gone for good. I have mild Tinnitus caused by flying with a head cold. If I had worn ear plugs on the flight, I would not have Tinnitus. If you have a cold and have to fly, *wear ear plugs*. If you're going to a concert, *wear ear plugs*.

Listening to loud music is OK, but it should not be done constantly. Listen for an hour, and then give your ears a break for awhile. Otherwise, you'll be enjoying a high frequency test tone, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

[make_or_break]

Any constant loud noise will cause tinnitus. Even intense short bursts can cause some amount of damage. Live rock shows are some of the worst. Standing next to a 5,000,000,000HP (at least it sounded like it was that powerful) Top Fuel dragster engine doing a shakedown test without hearing protection doesn't help either. Both I've done way too much, coupled with taxing some really sweet premium mobile audio systems I've mashed together in a past lifetime were my weakness and downfall (and no, I didn't overdo the subs...much) and being around and driving open exhaust track racers with weak protection (foam plugs only go so far sometimes). I've actually gotten used to the ringing of the tinnitus, which I've had for the past 5 or 6 years, but it does pay not to overindulge in the ear cans at all, else the ringing chimes in with full force, and presumably making things worse.

[pubmat]

I think they should be called generation WHA?? But still, I wonder if you can take minoxidil for the hairs in your ears...lord knows I have plenty hair on the OUTSIDE of my ears.

[khicon]

I'm a teenager and love my parent's hifi system. Monitor Audio's powered by Denon. There's just no way I would do anything to put my hearing in harm. It's just too large a deal of ignorance as well as a sense that music is meant to be a background activity.

[make_or_break]

Headphone use has NEVER been so rampant and widespread as it is today. I'd say chances are good that today's iPod phreaks are tomorrow's Miracle-Ear mavens. That said, who knows what will be in store for this generation by the time they hit the senility years (c'mon...no snide remarks about them already being there). Perhaps there will be gee whiz, perfected hearing ear implants that do away with all this fallible, fragile biological crap that we're all born with.

With their luck, it'll be made by Bose.

[potestasx]

I believe that the increased risk for hearing loss can be attributed to music being 'louder' than it used to be. Mixers and producers have taken advantage more and more of compression that keeps the volume closer to the maximum possible over the entire duration of the song. This actually improves sound on cheap speakers or headphones with limited dynamic range, but the loss in dynamics is apparent on higher-end components.

Why does this cause more damage to your hearing? With exception to very loud sounds (about 120dB+), your ears are able to tolerate high volumes over short intervals. A loud cymbal here or there, a guitar solo, etc. The problem is, When an entire song is at a loud volume, your ears don't have enough rehabilitation time before the next loud moment, so the loud music continues, and the hearing loss becomes permanent.

I am an avid music listener, a musician, and a mixer/engineer (none of which are my day job :)). I have become very conscious of my hearing over the past few years and have made changes to the way I listen to music. Unfortunately, there are costs involved, but think about losing all or part of your hearing and what that would mean to your everyday life.

Here are some things that will help:
- Buy better speakers/headphones. Better-quality speakers or headphones will allow you to hear musical nuances at lower volumes than lower-quality ones. That being said, more expensive does not always mean better. While this may be a little subjective, my $100 AKG headphones by far have a better sound than my $100 Sony headphones. Buying speakers/heaphones can be tricky, headphones moreso since you aren't always able to try before you buy. Speakers can sound different given the environment, so what you hear on speakers in-store may be different than your home.
- Wear earplugs when in a noisy environment. The cheap foam or wax earplugs will do the job. I know you can get made fun of for wearing them at shows (I have) and the music won't sound as good. If you can, get a pair of custom earplugs. Etymotic Research and Westone both have their own designs. They have special filters that lower the volume across the board, meaning the sound isn't muffled like with normal earplugs. You'll have to go to a licensed audiologist and get impressions made of your ears. Depending on the specialist, they can send the impressions directly or the impressions will be give to you to mail off. The price of the impressions and the earplugs will run between about $150-$200. In return, you get earplugs that will last several years, with the capability interchangeable filters for different volume levels or if the filters get worn or damaged.
- Listen to music in the quietest possible environment. This means ROLL YOUR CAR WINDOWS UP. You are doing both of us a favor. You can turn the music down so you don't have to accommodate the high noise floor and I won't get the compulsion to stab my eyeball with a ballpoint pen to distract me from the terrible song that you are listening to. With headphones, sound-isolating earbuds are becoming more prevalent and more reasonably priced.

There. Do I sound like your grandmother? I'm 26. I guess that makes me wise beyond my years and a nerd.

[Crash2100]

I've had really good hearing all though my life, and my ears hurt even if the volume is cranked up just a little too high. So, I've always wondered how anyone could possibly enjoy listing to things real loud. Whenever I hear a car go by with a ridiculously loud booming stereo, it makes me wonder whether these people can actually somehow enjoy the music cranked up so loud, or if they're just someone with ADD or something, trying to get attention from everyone.

[doccoffin]

I went to a lot of live concerts in the late 60s, early 70s and for a very long time now, I haven`t been able to hear the person across from me talking in a crowded retaurant. Sometimes this is not a bad thing.