How loud is loud, how to measure it? Is THX calibration bad for your health?

[bennybbbx]

Part of this is adaption of the ear to ambient noise. Muscles shift the positions of middle ear bones to change sensitivity. But this biological adaptation, which increases our dynamic range perception, doesn't happen fast enough to protect from sudden impulses like gunshots, nor can it protect against sustained sounds that are too loud.

then it depend on the people how good that work. but many get hear loss. new from march 2022 https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/03/1113182

Alerting that over one billion people aged 12 to 35, risking losing their hearing due to prolonged and excessive exposure to loud music and other high volume recreational noise, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued new international safety advice on Wednesday to tackle the rising threat of hearing loss.

My understanding is that high frequency response is the primary contributing factor to the "cocktail party effect", or the ability to distinguish individual voices in loud environments.

you can verify easy that good binaural hearing is need. go in a room where many peoples speak and hear mono (put 1 ear plug inside) so only can hear with 1 ear. then get much problems to understand. same happen also when you record in stereo a cocktail party and then switch to mono. about cocktail party effect in short stand in german wiki . i translate this with google translate to english

The cocktail party effect is closely related to the ability to localize sound sources. Once the sense of hearing has determined the direction of a sound source, it is also able to distinguish the sound components in this direction from components from other directions

here stand it in more lines in english. my english is not so good to understand it complete. but it look very detailed and is long. https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/jn.00349.2020

​

 

[MRC01]

then it depend on the people how good that work. but many get hear loss. new from march 2022 https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/03/1113182
...

I didn't say this biological adaption protected against hearing loss. In fact, I said that it did not. The problem is, people turn up the volume to "make it sound good". The ear biologically adapts to the higher volume level, so it doesn't sound as loud as it did, so they turn it up more. They are defeating their hearing's built-in adaptation. Another problem: people listen with earbuds in noisy environments, so they turn up the volume higher than the ambient noise.

I think this biological adaption did protect our hearing for many thousands of years. Until we invented the volume control!

This is why we should listen to music (or movies, or anything else) at a volume that perceptually sounds just a bit "too quiet" and has us wanting to turn it up just a bit. If the volume level is fully satisfying, then turn it down just shy of that. In noisy environments, use noise isolating or noise cancelling headphones.

... you can verify easy that good binaural hearing is need. go in a room where many peoples speak and hear mono (put 1 ear plug inside) so only can hear with 1 ear. then get much problems to understand. ...

Like many phenomena, the "cocktail party effect" may have multiple root causes. You can demonstrate the same with frequency response. Apply a low pass filter at incrementally increasing degrees. It gets progressively more difficult to pick out the individual voices & conversations.

 

[bennybbbx]

I didn't say this biological adaption protected against hearing loss. In fact, I said that it did not. The problem is, people turn up the volume to "make it sound good". The ear biologically adapts to the higher volume level, so it doesn't sound as loud as it did, so they turn it up more. They are defeating their hearing's built-in adaptation. Another problem: people listen with earbuds in noisy environments, so they turn up the volume higher than the ambient noise.

yes and so i think it is important to see the level in db (when calibrate) for headphones and speakers.

Like many phenomena, the "cocktail party effect" may have multiple root causes. You can demonstrate the same with frequency response. Apply a low pass filter at incrementally increasing degrees. It gets progressively more difficult to pick out the individual voices & conversations.

there are many known with cocktail party problems that can hear enough frequency and that people that wear hearing devices hear then all frequency but still have this binaural problems

 

[Chromatischism]

you mean this about the bad group delay of speaker corrrection software and how to EQ better to get better group delay ?

Yes. I have read that Dirac can introduce this effect but I haven't seen it quantified.

 

[Peterinvan]

Yep
Noise-induced hearing loss is very common. If you are continuously exposed to noise that exceeds 85 decibels, your hearing might be irreversibly damaged.

Noise-related hearing loss can be brought on by long-term subjection to extremely high levels of noise, which leads to a gradual deterioration of your hearing. It can also be caused by a single instance of a loud burst of noise that can immediately result in hearing loss due to hair cells inside of your inner ear that get permanently destroyed by noise or to high volume.

Unfortunately many of us who love rock concerts probably

About 15 years ago, I was building a pair of DIY speakers, and I did not attenuate the tweeters. I must have listened to the speakers for a few hours, but ended up with Tinnitus, ringing at about 9Khz. I never recovered

 

[Descartes]

About 15 years ago, I was building a pair of DIY speakers, and I did not attenuate the tweeters. I must have listened to the speakers for a few hours, but ended up with Tinnitus, ringing at about 9Khz. I never recovered

How loud were you listening at to damage your hearing like that?

 

[Peterinvan]

How loud were you listening at to damage your hearing like that?

Normal or just above volume on the amp.
However the tweeters must have been too loud. I believe the tweeters were piezoelectric type. I had not made a crossover at that stage.

 

[Frontino]

So, I looked at the most recent recommendation for maximum sound level exposure for prolonged time and I found 70 dBA for 24 hours from the World Health Organization.

From that I halved the time lenght to 12 hours, since we also sleep and rest at home, and doubled the level to 73 dBA.

Now, since ripping all discs to extract the main audio track and scan them for average loudness is a hassle I don't want to get into, I took as reference Dolby's noise, which is -19 dBFS RMS when filtered 22.4Hz-22.4KHz (per SMPTE guide), which is also close to the level I've seen on many movie soundtracks front channels.

Starting from 85 dBC as cinema level, on Sengpielaudio I estimated its equivalent SPL A-weighted to be 83 dB.

So, to follow WHO recommendation, we should listen at no higher than -10 dB from cinema reference.

 

[Andysu]

So, I looked at the most recent recommendation for maximum sound level exposure for prolonged time and I found 70 dBA for 24 hours from the World Health Organization.

From that I halved the time lenght to 12 hours, since we also sleep and rest at home, and doubled the level to 73 dBA.

Now, since ripping all discs to extract the main audio track and scan them for average loudness is a hassle I don't want to get into, I took as reference Dolby's noise, which is -19 dBFS RMS when filtered 22.4Hz-22.4KHz (per SMPTE guide), which is also close to the level I've seen on many movie soundtracks front channels.

Starting from 85 dBC as cinema level, on Sengpielaudio I estimated its equivalent SPL A-weighted to be 83 dB.

So, to follow WHO recommendation, we should listen at no higher than -10 dB from cinema reference.

but have you actually been to a THX cinema ? if so list area , name of cinema and screen number and films that you ,
. . .
don't worry i been to CIC Empire Leicester Square , Empire 1 london and CIC/UCI high wycombe 1 , buckinghamshire