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.
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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.
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.
Yes, and it’s mostly the wind noise, because on my electric motorcycle I need them more than on my large touring bike with superb wind protection.
Thanks for sharing your experience!
They got that all correct, for sure. I already have tinnitus, so extended wind noise aggravates that, and loud sounds tend to get mentally overwhelming for me. Earplugs resolve both of those problems, and are just a necessity.
I will also add that riding a motorcycle is primarily about situational awareness. When you’re going any speed above running pace, scenery is speeding past, the road is right there with nothing in between it and you, wind rushing - the lizard brain goes “pay fucking attention!” The same thing in a car, you have a bubble around you which is stationary in relation to your person, and your lizard brain is not triggered to pay attention in quite the same way.
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 see! Makes perfect sense
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.
That’s my point, wind is loud
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.
In Illinois it’s law you need to be wearing shoes. I’ve never seen it enforced, but it’s in the handbook. Being naked can be considered public indecency depending on a few other factors.
In Illinois it’s law you need to be wearing shoes.
If you ride a motorcycle, you should stop.
Using mainly the front brake with my right hand, yes.
Is your bike electric? If not, you’re too loud.
Loudest vehicles in my neighborhood are all the cars with the catalysts cut out of them. And because they’re so slow, they’re around SO MUCH LONGER.
Bikes aren’t loud. People who want loud bikes are loud.
Did you know that most road noise is tire noise? Those sound abatement walls along highways are to deal with YOUR car’s tire noise, not engine noise.
Tires don’t make any significant noise below 30 km/h. This is why electric cars must emit a fake engine noise, for pedestrian safety. In a city, motorbikes are BY FAR the number one source of noise pollution. They can be heard up to a kilometer away, and can cover the sound of people talking inside of a building.
Bikes ARE loud. This is a fact denied only by bikers, who all have their eardrums damaged by their engine.
That doesn’t jive with anything described in this thread. We wear earplugs, because they are noisy “to us”. Bikes all meet certain volume limits from the factory. So do cars. (they are in fact often the same levels…) You have bikes on the brain, think any high reving, 4 cylinder is a bike, and are happy to point your finger at it. But you also… aren’t hearing the dozens, hundreds, of other bikes that are going by.
A honda S2000, any Civic type r from before 2020, are going to make some very similar noises if some jerk decides noise is better than enjoying your drive. I strongly suspect you’re blaming bikes for wankers with $50 tesco cherry bombs on their panda.
Just a kilometer? Look, I’m 3km from a major highway. And 2km from two different rail yards. I can hear anything with a missing muffler, and I hear trains at high idle every day. The fact you think it’s “just” 1km for the jerks? that also shows you just don’t know the subject.
I have several decades on my ears. “I” am the one who hears the things. Case in point, some dropped pixel 3 earbuds were on the ground, and the only one who could hear the music playing was me. And “I” am the one with the noisy hobbys. I protect my ears. Honestly, it sounds a bit like YOU may have some hearing damage? Do you keep a fan on in your bedroom at night? is it one of the 10" or smaller ones?
I get wanting quiet. But I also think your calibration is off.
I’m less than 300m away from a highway at this very moment and can barely hear it. It’s sound is covered by people talking in the office. 1km inside a city is a lot. Cars are barely audible from 30m away. This is not a problem with my hearing. I often cycle on the road that’s next to the highway, the only sound barrier being trees, and I can hear the woosh woosh sound of car tires but not their engines. Unlike bikes.
Bike and car engine sounds are easy to tell apart. Loud cars are usually VW Golfs or BMWs used by assholes, and they are somewhat rare and quieter than any random bike.
Here in France, the noise limit for bikes is higher than that for cars, and Harley Davidson have a special exemption to be allowed to go up to 97dB. Bikers always insist that their bike is silent, yet on neutral without acceleration, they are consistently louder than cars accelerating.
Motorcycles are disproportionately more likely to be the source of loud, annoying engine noises, even though there are more cars than motorbikes. Loud cars are very rare, and are still quieter than any motorcycle.
So are you.
If we’re talking about the kind of bikes that are so loud you can hear them from 5 blocks away, god yes. I wish severe harm on every selfish tryhard fuckwit that drives one.
Motorcycles with a proper muffler on them can stay though.
I’m feeling this one today. I had to ride about 25 miles to an appointment this morning, but as I pulled onto the main road, a 70 mph dual carriageway, I realised that I had forgotten my earplugs. It’s been about an hour, and my ears still don’t feel right.
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)_/¯
This is interesting! I’ve heard Spotify normalizes loudness, but didn’t know they go to terrible ranges just to sound louder.
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.
I absolutely do wear earplugs when going there. People find it weird, but we’ll see who’s gonna hear my laughter in a few years.
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?
Doesn’t everyone do that to get a good start to their day? Shit sometimes I do it in the parking garage because the echo gives me double tinnitus.
Skydiving.
I have ~4500 jumps and jump planes are very loud. Even with a full face helmet, jump planes are very loud and I didn’t use ear plugs until my last 1000 jumps or so.
I do have a fair amount of time shooting, but always used ear protection.
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.
Nice insight, thanks!
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.
Yeah this desire for extremes is what drives people into very absurd situations overall
I volunteer at a non-profit concert venue.
The reason I fell in love with it in the first place was that you could go to a rock concert there, stand right in front of the stage, and talk to the person next to you.
Now I know why: They enforce a hard 100dB limit, and the entire room is covered in sound-dampening foam.Wow! That’s great to know :)
What is the goal of the nonprofit, if I may ask? Just mass entertaining, or something more complex?
Providing a non-commercial space for cultural events to people of limited means.
Also, providing a stage for new artists that aren’t already well-established.
A rock concert with 3 bands and a DJ will cost 5-7€ at the door, a beer costs 1,50€. But there’s also art exhibits, poetry slams, sharing flea markets (take what you need, give what you can), movie nights and fire shows.
This is only possible because 15 members spend a lot of time maintaining it, and during an evening, up to 20 volunteers work the bar and the door, all without payment.Honestly, I’ve never seen a place like this anywhere else, that’s why I decided to join and invest a lot of my free time there.
There’s an outdoor area, too:
Nice!
Sounds like a nice social space overall :)
I literally take earplugs with me wherever i go. They’re in all my vehicles and all my bags.
Foam earplugs are cheap—there’s no reason not to.
Going to concerts with earplugs is great.
Even if the music is loud I can always hear the people next to me and the music still sounds good.
Fair enough!
WHAT???
(as said by a 40 year old who spent his teens and 20s next to a giant 30 foot tall speaker every week at a concert club. And I mean RIGHT next to it. During crowded concerts I was literally smooshed against it. )
Ouch!
It’s gotten to the point that I just keep ear plugs on me at all times. Concerts, movie theaters, loud family gatherings, whatever. If shit’s too crazy I pop them in. I only wish I started this before suffering permanent hearing loss. I can no longer experience silence.
Even after hearing loss …… it took my family all too long to figure out why my grandmother couldn’t hear despite hearing aids. It turns out a combination of cheap hearing aids and loud relatives were also painfully loud for her so she would turn them off
I feel you. Take care of your hearing now, at least!
It’s the same at movie theaters. I wear earbuds not plugged in to a source just to reduce the sound level at a movie lately.
Also true. Seriously, we need quieter theaters as well. There’s no need to bombard our ears!
I wear the acoustic earplugs to concerts now, or at festivals stay far from the speakers. But I’m not sure. Maybe yes if the acoustics allowed for the sound to be more evenly distributed over the crowd.
Those earplugs made for concerts are great, they literally turn down the volume but the music sounds good not muted.
Interesting - I don’t seem to have many specialized earplugs in here
I understand the point and have definitely thought similar BUT, I like being able to feel the low end which can’t happen at low volume.
You mean all the bass vibrating through the body?
Yes, especially the kick drum
Then wear hearing protection. It won’t block the rumbling in your bones.
On the alternate I’ve been to concerts where you just couldn’t hear the band playing unless you pressed into everyone at the front. Was a terrible experience and felt like I wasted my money. I’m a big fan of putting in ear plugs, eating an edible and then riding out the vibrations. I agree there must be a good middle ground but I would rather it too loud with ear pro than too quiet.
Same issue I mentioned in my comment! There’s a constant battle happening between the audio engineers and the noise floor of the the venue. It surprisingly doesn’t take too much more db to be heard above the crowd, like in a perfect world, if the crowd is sitting at 90db then 95db would be ideal. But unfortunately a crowd’s loudness ebs and flows and that can easily get drowned out so most just default to 100db and embrace the inevitable tinnitus. I recommend everyone invest in Earasers or something of that quality so y’all can appreciate music safely without losing all of the dynamics.
I see! At some point powerful vibes can be gone as well - which is something I do not normally consider since I’m not necessarily into hardcore metal or something.
Doesn’t need to be metal to have a bass or drum line that shakes your ass.
I wear musicians earplugs pretty much any time I’m in a crowded place because the people are the loudest and noisiest things. A quieter music act would be quickly drowned out. But, the earplugs help me hear everything better (the music, the people next to me trying to talk to me, general situational awareness) because they only block the damaging parts to the sound without muffling everything.
If you have ever felt the relief of silence after being in a noisy environment, musicians earplugs on a keychain with you always will change the way you interact with the loud world we live in. They have saved me from unnecessary stress, anxiety, and further hearing loss at work, on a night out with friends, crowded bars, clubs, outdoor events, conferences, malls. I appreciate well engineered sound design, like FEELING the sound wash over and through me. But bad acoustics, noisy people, and tinnitus stress me the fuck out.
TLDR: I wear musicians earplugs mostly because of people and they help me hear everything better and feel better even if they’re not needed to avoid injury.
Can you recommend a brand?
EARasures are the ones I’ve been using. No idea if they’re the best. A good fit for your ear is critical for whatever brand you choose.
Tag me too, please!
Last concert I brought ear plugs for the first time and still heard the music perfectly fine. They were made for this exact purpose to be fair, but I’m never going without again. There seems to be a history of deafness in my family so might as well protect what’s left of my hearing while I can. I felt a little self-conscious, but at least I wasn’t the only one, so maybe the idea is becoming less controversial?
But still, I disagree with you (so going to up vote lol). I think I prefer they stay loud but we just encourage people to wear ear plugs. That way, when I sit as far back as I did this last time, it still feels like I’m right there in the middle of it.
I don’t fully grasp why would one advocate for loud music AND earplugs. Wouldn’t it make sense to just turn volume down? :D
So if I’m sitting in a farther seat I can hear it well but if I’m in a closer seat I can wear ear plugs. But maybe that’s my own unpopular opinion lol.
I was under the impression that sound systems at venues are built in a way that improves the reach for people sitting away by introducing louder speakers on the upper part of the installation, ones that don’t blast the front row but direct sound into back rows.
But that might not be a feature everywhere, and from that point I get it :)
Maybe it does make sense to make it loud in the front and just don’t blast it far, though I wonder if sound quality will turn from bad to shit if we do so.
The counter argument is that you get to decide where you stand, close and damagingly loud, or safe and far away, or anywhere in between. Except for the last one I went to, in a tiny basement (max 15 people) blasting metal inches away from my face
Unless it’s a huge open venue, it’s normally loud everywhere, and there’s no escape, in my experience
I think there’ll be massive differences in volume depending on culture, location & genre.
Ranked loudest to quietest, from my most memorable gigs: Metal/emo, punk, rock, ska, soca, hip-hop, reggae, jazz, folk. Never been to a jazz venue and thought it was too loud!
I’m not much into gigs, but thing that weirded me the most is why electronic music is so loud?
I’m not talking EDM or something, just regular electronic songs. Why not have them quieter and better? We’re here for the finest of sounds, aren’t we?
Or even classical music can get just TOO loud sometimes. Often times, it is intended to overwhelm, but not deafen, for God’s sake!
