Listening Loud
I’m old enough to be unimpressed with music played very loud. And when I say loud, I’m talking about ear damaging loud. I admit to attending the occasional rock concerts in my past or turned the volume knob a little too far on my playback system when intensely listening to Peter Gabriel’s “SO” record or the Beatles remixed in 5.1 surround for the Cirque du Soleil “Love” production on DVD-Audio. But I think things have reached new heights recently (no pun intended) in concert venues and recording studios.
There’s a major artist working my studio these days. She and her producer are camped out for about a month of writing, playing, and recording her new album. It’s great news for me…it’s not everyday that I have a Grammy winning contemporary R&B celebrity working at AIX. I met the artist yesterday and found her to be very pleasant, friendly, and open.
The producer is a multi-instrumentalist with a long list of credits including Stevie Wonder and Justin Bieber (never did I ever imagine that I would be typing his name in these posts!). He and his engineer came by on Saturday to get started. I gave them a quick introduction to the studio. It’s a little different from the usual analog room because I have a control surface, digital patch bay, analog outboard gear, and an analog patch bay as well. Once you understand the digital routing happening in the computer, things are much easier.
These guys have spent lots hours in studios. They were particularly interested in the monitoring system. I don’t have a $18,000 pair of ATC 100 pumping speakers…I count on my B&W 801 Matrix IIIs for the listening to music AND the THX certified JBL theatrical 5.1 system when we’re working on a film mix. There is a TMH “Profunder” subwoofer handling the LFE output that can be attached to the B&Ws or the THX system. When they started listening to the sound of the room and the speakers, they cranked up the volume way past where I’ve ever ventured. My reference level stays around 85 dB, which is very healthy. It’s not overwhelming because my material is so dynamic.
But I got to stand there and hear the room in overdrive when they pushed the output to 95 even 105 dB! That’s crazy loud! And the content that they were playing was heavily mastered…meaning it was all-loud all the time. Can you say listening fatigue or ear damage? I’m ok with them listening as they prefer but I can’t imagine trying to make production decisions when you’re being hammered by the basic track. They decided that the sound of the JBLs is preferable…I think just because the drivers are bigger.
And to top it off, I had to route the stereo output of their Pro Tools setup through a couple of inputs on my console so that I could take advantage of the subwoofer…it just wasn’t right unless it could shake up your stomach.
I mentioned this to one of the new tenants in the adjacent studio and he told me that he wears hearing protection during the sessions that he works over at Interscope Records. He told me that the playback level averages over a 100 dB! And the music consuming public is supposed to believe that this level is the artist’s intent? Imagine a whole apartment complex playing back their favorite music with SPLs nearing 100 dB…the earth would move…literally.
I guess I just an old guy that wants to keep my hearing for as long as possible. Honestly, the level of the sound in the room astounded me. Maybe that’s what it takes to make great records.
I have hearing loss and mild tinnitus from too many loud concerts in my younger days. I have used hearing protection at concerts for years now. I attended a local outdoor festival here in Pemberton, BC this summer and was astounded by the sound levels. I have never experienced anything this loud in 40+ years of concert going. Even with the hearing protection I was wearing it was loud. You could feel your pants moving from the bass waves! The majority of the young crowd seemed oblivious to the fact they were doing irreparable damage that weekend.
It’s a real challenge. I make my son wear hearing protection during his rehearsals and concerts. He’ll thanks me someday.
I could’ not agree more. If I am actively listening, I like 75-80 db. Once over 80 db., it becomes painful. My wife & I attended several performances in Vegas & found all but one enjoyable. If my wife did not have cotton batting to put in my ears, we would have left. I have read that volume increases emotional response. Apparently senior nomadic tribesmen in the desert have the hearing equivalence of a 20 year old North American. If you love music, why would you want to damage your hearing?
Very good question.
My wife and I went to a Rick Springfield concert in Las Vegas. It was so painfully loud that we walked (no ran) out after one number. The ushers were stuffing rolled up napkins in their ears. Oddly, a gaggle of young girls ran up to the stage. I assumed that they were all profoundly deaf and were just at the stage to read Rick’s lips.
Hi Barry, those are quite low SPL values for the onset of pain. Not sure what you have used to measure them, but I recently compared smartphone ‘sound level’ apps with a cheap SPL meter and found the apps provide consistently low readings, sometimes by 15 dB!
Hi Grant. I am using a $50.00 Radioshack meter, “Scoshe “. My I phone app ” Decibel me ” reads higher. I can take 80+ db for a little while, but it becomes unpleasant for any sustained time. Barry
What odds that it doesn’t sound nearly as loud to them as to you, Mark? If that’s their daily working environment….
I suppose it’s become their standard operating procedure.
I think it’s a worldwide trend. There’s a famous folk and world music festival at a little town called Port Fairy in my state. Fifteen years or so back, there was some basic amplification in each of the tent venues, but levels were low enough so that there was no bleed through from one tent to another and we got a real insight into what the performers actually sounded like. Since then, each year I have watched as the mixing desks got bigger, the amps got louder and the bottom end got way out of control, too loud and with no bass definition at all. The result is that bleed through from one venue to another has become intolerable (there are many solo performers trying to compete with amplified groups) and the whole thing in my mind is a disaster. The organisers don’t see anything wrong and many of the performers (at least outwardly) don’t seem to mind. I wonder whether the people in charge of the mixing desks are mixing for their damaged hearing – I guess if you’re going deaf then things don’t sound as loud. It’s a sad state of affairs that does no favours to live music at all.
Sorry to post twice in succession, but have you seen Barry Blesser’s article, “The Seductive (Yet Destructive) Appeal of Loud Music”? His conclusion is similar to Dibble’s, who he quotes as saying that popular music can only be appreciated at 96 dB or louder, for cognitive reasons.
That’ll be an interesting read…thanks.
I would recommend getting the inexpensive Etymotic earplugs. They reduce sound levels by about 20dB without altering the frequency response the way ordinary foam earplugs do.
I have some custom molded earplugs…I got them for myself and my son.
Great article Mark.
Yes, there is a body of popular music that is most satisfying w/ peaks around 100-105db,(Rolling Stones, for example,) but system overload or room overload can occur if not careful, as well as ear damage. It kind of makes sense for the complete acoustic performance envelope to max out at the same time: Ears, speakers, amps, room.
I’ve recently put together and finished a real nice near-field control room type system in a small room in my house; offed my big rig after decades. On material that needs it, my entire system including room will give a very clean 90 db, and in a 10×10 room that is properly treated, that is plenty big and loud w/ o strain. Like you, my everyday levels are less.
We’ve talked about this before, and that’s why I made my remarks about “pro sound” a while back. These guys are freaking deaf! So excuse me, I don’t care how many hits they’ve had, their audio sensibilities are coarse to say the least, and my tale of hearing more info playing the record on a great hi-fi than playing the master at the studio begins to make total sense! Thanks Mark, Craig
I don’t throw every engineer and audio professional into the “listens too loud” category…plenty of reasonable people make records in studios with great systems at 85 dB.
I feel bad for them. Wish I could turn back the clock and undo the hearing damage I inflected on myself over the years.
I’m around a lot of people who listen at ridiculous levels- I mean you can hear their earbuds from ten feet away. I think companies involved in hearing aid and closed captioning technologies might be present good investment opportunities. People are deafening themselves.
I see/hear this one during every run I do along the beach. But just how to we inform people about the damage that can be done?
Mark:
Since many folks nowadays use headphones for listening to music at home, how can they measure the ‘loudness’ of these headphone levels?
O
It’s perfectly possible to measure the level reaching your ears even when using a set of headphones.
Recently, an otrhophonist friend was saying how surprised she was at the amount of ear damage she was detecting in people in their 20s. In her experience many of these people will experience hearing loss in their 40s or 50s.
We could only conclude that the environment today is not only louder but exacerbated by high volume levels used in the various ear bud devices.
Too bad they are only experiencing high volume rather than quality while their hearing system is still intact.
Maybe this helps explain why live concert sound is often too loud, that is, too loud to listen to comfortably for an extended period and too loud to distinguish instruments and voices clearly. Sometimes it’s the artists themselves that demand it. I don’t know if that’s the result of listening too loud in the studio or wanting to drown out less than stellar playing and voices. But from the typically hostile reaction of sound booth folks, this article makes me wonder if it’s a case of recording studio carried to live performance.
There’s some great comments above regarding hearing damage and I’m so glad that I took measures preventing cumulative hearingoss and damage when still in my teens. I attended a Deep Purple concert in possibly one of the worst venues in the world (Lakeland Florida Civic Center). It was the first time I’d been frightened by the threat of hearing loss and damage. My friends made fun of my funny looking “hearing aids”, after all we were all bullet proof when we were 17 years old! I’m so glad I spent that money way back when-i saw Aerosmith at the same place a few months later. It was too loud, but Aerosmith made up for it by delivering a horrible show-Mr Tyler may have been unable to do anything beyond scream at the time. I also remember buying a very clean amp and preamplifier (Philips I think) that I some needed to remind myself how loud it actually was. That combo drove my JBL L212 and my Acoustic Research towers beyond a purity I’d never experienced beforehand. By that time it seemed at least 75-% of my friends had already done enough damage to not even experience the performance asking for more treble and volume after just 3-4 years. I truly believe musicians & engineers suffer damage much sooner than many are willing to admit.
You’re absolutely right. I walked into the studio after the previous night’s session and found the control room volume turned up to 120 dB SPL. Crazy.
Let me guess how you got into the habit of checking the volume levels before turning your system on 🙂
LOL
On November 1, 2014 I attended the 5th Annual Gala presented by the 100 Black Men organization of South Bend, IN. This organization mentors at-risk youth. The earlier portion of the program was speakers and presentations, with background music by a live band that allow normal conversation during dinner. However, after the main program ended the band kicked it up and the “party” began. The sad part was at that point the audio/video group cranked the music up way too loud. My phone sound meter app register just over 95db, and I was at a table at least 60 feet from the stage. I wanted to go over and let one of the sponsors for the night know that they should come down at least 10db (to around 85db), to make this part of the evening more enjoyable. But, the wife was not in favor of this action on my part. With that I tolerated about 10 minutes more before leaving. It occurs to me that most people do not understand that such high levels extended periods of time are harmful. Perhaps it is already too late for most of them and they need that level to “hear” what is being played. My home system, because my room size, is calibrated to 75db and it is more than adequate for the source material that I play for movies. For music I listen at 50db. At both levels extended listening is neither too loud or fatiguing for my viewing and listening needs.
Thanks for the article.