Cause of Listening Fatigue?

[Neuro]

"Listening fatigue" is a subjective experience secondary to many causes.

-Physiological:
High volume can cause a transient decrease in sensitivity to certain frequencies and listening fatigue.

https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/53140

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... ry_Fatigue

-Psychologically:
People with impaired hearing and children born deaf now hearing with cochlear implants have increased listening fatigue.
Listening to reproduced music via suboptimal speakers results in increased listening fatigue.
Listening to low-coded music, such as MP3, increases listening fatigue.
Listening to non-engaging music causes listening fatigue.

Deaf people have increased "listening fatigue".
Deaf people "hear" through sign language and lip-reading.

Concentration fatigue is a familiar term in the Deaf community. Some people who are deaf or Hard of Hearing experience this as a side effect of their hearing loss. Trying to concentrate, watching signing, lipreading and listening to speech and sound can be exhausting, especially over long periods of time. Some people who have a hearing loss have to pay extra attention to visual cues, which ‘fill in the gaps’, of what they did not hear. A good example is lipreading. Concentrating on lipreading, sign language and body language cues puts strain on the brain, which means the body is working extra hard.

Concentration fatigue | Deafblind UK

In her latest blog, Deaf advocate and Deafblind UK Outreach Officer Louise Goldsmith finds out more about concentration fatigue and its impact on people living with hearing loss. Concentration fatigue

deafblind.org.uk

It is probably the cognitive attention that determines the "listening fatigue". Interpreting the sounds of a cochlear implant is extremely demanding and requires complete concentration. Previous experience is crucial for understanding.
It is also cognitive difficult to fill in what is missing in the MP3 flow.

It seems to be the secondary psychological cognitive analysis in the frontal lobes and not the quality of the primary sensory signal source in the brain that causes fatigue.

 

[Chromatischism]

It is also cognitive difficult to fill in what is missing in the MP3 flow.

This does not make sense to me. Good mp3 encoders only remove non-audible bits. Ever notice how really busy songs don't compress as well and end up with a higher VBR? That's because there aren't many quiet passages to reduce bitrate.

 

[redhermes]

What we do know for certain is that low inteligibillity or a noisy environment or hearing loss where it's difficult to understand the lyrics causes listening fatigue faster. As for compressed audio, I have only seen or heard about references to studies that indicate listening fatigue. But no definite evidence.

For example:

Analyzing Speech Quality Perception Using Electroencephalography

Common speech quality evaluation methods rely on self-reported opinions after perceiving test stimuli. Whereas these methods-when carefully applied-provide valid and reliable quality indices, they provide little insight into the processes underlying perception and judgment. In this paper, we...

ieeexplore.ieee.org

Guinea pigs:



No indication of listening fatigue directly, but MP3 was found to trigger more negative emotions which again may potentially lead to listening fatigue over time.

AES E-Library » The Effects of MP3 Compression on Perceived Emotional Characteristics in Musical Instruments

Musical instrument sounds have distinct timbral and emotional characteristics that can change when audio processing is applied. This paper investigates the effects of MP3 compression on the emotional characteristics of eight sustained instrument sounds using listening tests. The experimental...

www.aes.org

As mentioned previously here, a research on listening fatigue is challenging because it requires a time of span and other aspects could come into play.
There are a good number who claim that listening to hirez instead of redbook makes them able to listen longer without fatigue, but proving this in a study would be demanding.

Really interesting (and somewhat surprising) background information. Thanks for posting the links!

 

[mhardy6647]

Cause of listening fatigue?
Too much SINAD + a poorly-recorded digital source material

"Too much SINAD"?

 

[Cote Dazur]

At one point he theorizes that listening fatigue is caused by lossy compressed audio that sounds the same to the brain, but is missing information

Interesting theory, but just that a theory, an opinion really, nothing more.

To me, the main cause to listening fatigue happens when listening to the sound instead of listening to the music.

Listening to music on an elaborate hi-fi system (sensibly set up) or on a table top radio, will not induce listening fatigue, if enjoying the music and letting the emotion the music carry reach us. That is my theory, just my opinion really.

 

[majingotan]

Dude, don't you know digital doesn't even give you the whole waveform! It's missing part of the music and it cuts off the top, leading to a glassy midrange!!!

That's why vinyl sounds more natural!!!

*(inhales from hookah pipe)

Hey, I've got my own dopamine multiplier pipe too. On a seriously drunken note, I did eliminate that slow burn digital inducing fatigue (takes about an hour of listening to crappy mastered Jpop/Kpop) with my prior desktop chain. The biggest factor aside from switching to tubes was to completely get rid of Windows PC + USB itself, and put ultra clean bridge/transport none other than my SP2000 DAP (toslink to DAC) via uPnP from old Audirvana 3.5 (couldn't justify the price for Roon). My digital desktop chain now sounds uber analog with tons of plankton without any of those bloomy/warmish/sluggish/wimpy dynamics from vinyl

 

[Chromatischism]

 

[xaviescacs]

What I find particularly difficult in investigating listening fatigue is that it's a purely human feeling, it can't be measured, so you rely on human's subjective opinion and evaluation to perform any experiment. On the other hand, we know that the time to get tired depends a lot on the state of mind, which is a quite complex thing. Hence, it's quite difficult to apply controls, right? I mean, sometimes you get tired of listening to music and sometimes not. How do you know the state of mind or predisposition of a subject to listen to music before a test? Perhaps on could try to make the individual to perform some tests, always the same, before each experiment, to evaluate its mental capacities and state of mind at the moment... But of course one can't do the tests on the same day... Overall it appears to be a quite complex experiment.

The procedure could be based on modeling the time to get tired with an exponential distribution, then try to estimate the mean (1/lambda) using a particular track and then start introducing changes to original track and estimate again the mean, and try to reject the null. That however looks quite challenging as one expects the std error of the null mean to be quite high, as I guess it would have a lot of variability.

 

[Jaxjax]

simple.....anything Focal or anything like it.

 

[Chrispy]

TLDR but for the most part if you have listening fatigue it's most likely due poor speakers. Not everyone experiences such the same way, tho....you might find it acceptable where I might find it horrible screeching....

 

[watchnerd]

I just got a recent episode of listening fatigue because of Covid

 

[Chrispy]

I just got a recent episode of listening fatigue because of Covid

So more from being confined/limted for a while or did it actually change your preferences?

 

[watchnerd]

So more from being confined/limted for a while or did it actually change your preferences?

Neither.

Mucus and junk in my throat / nose / sinus impacting my hearing.

 

[majingotan]

I just got a recent episode of listening fatigue because of Covid

I'm a lucky MF on this one lol since I haven't been sick with any kind of respiratory viruses for many years now. Anyways, get well soon!

 

[Chrispy]

I'm a lucky MF on this one lol since I haven't been sick with any kind of respiratory viruses for many years now. Anyways, get well soon!

How do you know? Been tested a lot? Personally never been tested so not sure if I've had it....as allergies can make me wonder.

 

[watchnerd]

I'm a lucky MF on this one lol since I haven't been sick with any kind of respiratory viruses for many years now. Anyways, get well soon!

first I've had in 8 years

 

[majingotan]

How do you know? Been tested a lot? Personally never been tested so not sure if I've had it....as allergies can make me wonder.

Yep. I had to travel to SG last December so had to get a negative test result, both PCR and Antigen EVERY FRIGGING DAY during my stay there. Never got a positive result ever after tens of tests.

 

[Chromatischism]

Mucus and junk in my throat / nose / sinus impacting my hearing.

It has become evident to me over the years that there is a connection between the eustachian tube and our hearing ability. When it gets plugged up with junk, hearing can be affected.

 

[watchnerd]

It has become evident to me over the years that there is a connection between the eustachian tube and our hearing ability. When it gets plugged up with junk, hearing can be affected.

Yes indeed.

That's fundamental anatomy and physics of pressure.

That's why people get tubes put in their ears.

ENT docs are very familiar with this.

 

[xaviescacs]

In my case, what creates the bigger impact is good rest and relaxation. If I'm stressed or tired, there is no way to listen to music, at least in an active way. I just can't play something without listening to it.