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Topic: Why are our ears so foolish? (Read 38955 times) previous topic - next topic
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Why are our ears so foolish?

Reply #50 –
Quote from: dhromed on
So now I wonder what the dBage is of my headphones. Is there a simple way to measure the levels of what I normally listen to?
You may look up natural noises and their respective dB levels. Take off your headphones and listen to that particular noise. I think direct comparison should be quite easy by putting the headphones on and off. I sometimes do this to check that I'm listening at sane levels, it gets even easier with open headphones (you don't have to take them off).

Why are our ears so foolish?

Reply #51 –
Quote from: dhromed on
So now I wonder what the dBage is of my headphones. Is there a simple way to measure the levels of what I normally listen to?


If you measure the voltage across the terminals of your headphones and apply that to their rated sensitivity, you have some kind of an estimate.  If you adjust that by considering the spectral content of the music and the frequency response of the headphones, the quality of your estimate will probably improve. 

Acoustical measurements of headphones and earphone are not a simple thing, and their relevance to what actually happens when they are placed on anybody's head is far from exact. Our heads, pinnae (affect heaphones only)  and ear canals are all different and they all affect how headphones and earphones work.

Why are our ears so foolish?

Reply #52 –
Quote from: dhromed on
So now I wonder what the dBage is of my headphones. Is there a simple way to measure the levels of what I normally listen to?


dB meters aren't that expensive (at least here in the US, about $20). Wouldn't sticking one between the cans work?  Besides, it's a good tool for any audioph.. i mean music lover to have anyhow.
Music lover and recovering high end audiophile

Why are our ears so foolish?

Reply #53 –
Quote from: BearcatSandor on
Quote from: dhromed on
So now I wonder what the dBage is of my headphones. Is there a simple way to measure the levels of what I normally listen to?


dB meters aren't that expensive (at least here in the US, about $20). Wouldn't sticking one between the cans work?  Besides, it's a good tool for any audioph.. i mean music lover to have anyhow.


You really ought to use a headphone coupler to do this.
-----
J. D. (jj) Johnston

Why are our ears so foolish?

Reply #54 –
Quote from: BearcatSandor on
dB meters aren't that expensive (at least here in the US, about $20). Wouldn't sticking one between the cans work?  Besides, it's a good tool for any audioph.. i mean music lover to have anyhow.


I thought of that, but sound level diminishes significantly even when I pull the earmuffs away by a centimeter or two, so I doubt I'd get any sort of realistic data from that. I have access to one via some sound guys I know, but I'm not sure they'd let me borrow the thing anyway.

Why are our ears so foolish?

Reply #55 –
Quote from: Martel on
Quote from: dhromed on
So now I wonder what the dBage is of my headphones. Is there a simple way to measure the levels of what I normally listen to?
You may look up natural noises and their respective dB levels. Take off your headphones and listen to that particular noise. I think direct comparison should be quite easy by putting the headphones on and off. I sometimes do this to check that I'm listening at sane levels, it gets even easier with open headphones (you don't have to take them off).


You mean look up something like a car driving by, and then playing a sound of a car driving by and matching levels manually? I'm not sure how that could be done reliably unless one had a perfect recording of the sound as it occurred there and then.

Unfortunately, I lack any reasonable equipment to experiment seriously with this, both acoustically and electronically. I don't even have a microphone. The ones in my phone and pocket camera don't count.

I noticed the SPL article at Wikipedia has a set of examples, and they gave me a nice ballpark estimate. According to it, a "Washing machine, dish washer" weighs in at 50-53 dB. I consider mine fairly loud, and I certainly don't play music at that kind of volume— even though freerange sound behaves differently than the enclosed sound of heaphones; to me mostly in how speakers begin to become intrusively loud/harsh after an hour or two regardless of circumstances experienced so far.

So. Well. I guess I'm satisfied in that I probably never reach even close to 85dB with my headphones, and I'm not going to acquire all manner of tools just to quiet one vague worry of mine, but it would have been nice to put a real number on it. Maybe in the future.

Why are our ears so foolish?

Reply #56 –
I don't suppose the "if it's uncomfortable, turn it down" rule is wise, is it?
Music lover and recovering high end audiophile

Why are our ears so foolish?

Reply #57 –
Quote from: BearcatSandor on
I don't suppose the "if it's uncomfortable, turn it down" rule is wise, is it?


It's potentially dangerous in that you may find yourself having temporary threshold shift that reduces loudness, leading you to turn it up, ...

But if it IS uncomfortable, turn it down now.
-----
J. D. (jj) Johnston

Why are our ears so foolish?

Reply #58 –
Quote from: dhromed on
No, I meant to look up how loud a car driving by usually is and compare it to whatever stuff you're listening to at your chosen volume. If the music is significantly louder, you might have to turn down the volume.

Why are our ears so foolish?

Reply #59 –
Quote from: Martel on
Quote from: dhromed on
No, I meant to look up how loud a car driving by usually is and compare it to whatever stuff you're listening to at your chosen volume. If the music is significantly louder, you might have to turn down the volume.


Alright. Well, I did that, and you can read above what passes for my "experimental results". I looked up pages that all had some lists of common dB levels for various sources, and I find that I listen certainly no louder than 65dB, probably a lot lower. Some passages that don't qualify as quiet still let through a little bit of mouse clicks, but clicky sounds tend to punch through a lot.

I could sharpen the experiment by hauling my amp and computer to the kitchen while I'm running a basketful of laundry, but eh.

I'll give it some more thought later.

Why are our ears so foolish?

Reply #60 –
...or just spend 15 euros on an SPL meter.  I'm pretty sure my dishwasher is far louder than 53dB; perhaps in the mid-60s, if not higher.

The problem with that wikipedia article is that there are not enough examples to give you a good idea how loud 85dB is.

Why are our ears so foolish?

Reply #61 –
Why resort to such sophisticated measures? If your music is not louder than most sounds you hear during your everyday life, it's very likely it won't damage your hearing (or those sounds would have damaged your hearing already).

Why are our ears so foolish?

Reply #62 –
Quote from: Martel on
or those sounds would have damaged your hearing already

Assuming that you couldn't otherwise avoid those sounds, in which case listening to music above them is worse than just being exposed to them.  Unless you're using something that also reduces environmental noise at the same time, I'm not buying what you're trying to sell.

Anyhow, I think he was looking for something more objective.

Woodinville already presented the important points, which I believe are worth repeating...

You need to turn the music down the very moment you feel any discomfort or else you will get used to the volume because your threshold will shift.

The SPL of earphones needs to be measured with a coupler that matches the volume (as in displacement) of an ear canal.  This displacement causes a resonance which means that what hits your eardrum is actually made louder.

Why are our ears so foolish?

Reply #63 –
Quote
Anyhow, I think he was looking for something more objective.


By this point, it's more a fun what if than a real concern, but yeah, real measurements trump vague assessments.

Quote
You need to turn the music down the very moment you feel any discomfort or else you will get used to the volume because your threshold will shift.


Definitely no worries about that bit.

Why are our ears so foolish?

Reply #64 –
Quote from: BearcatSandor on
That's all helpful Ed, and what you say is true. I think i was unclear.  What i was wondering is why our ears are so readily fooled by our positive expectations.. You can't give someone chocolate cream pie, tell them it's cherry cream pie and fool them.  You can't give someone slightly grayed eye glasses, tell them "these are awesomely dark sunglasses" and have them think the bright summer day is suddenly dim and comfortable.  I'm excluding hypnosis situations..

However, you *can* easily fool most people in to thinking that two cables sound different if they are different gauges,


In the pie and the glasses example, the two are obviously different. If you gave the original vs a 32 kb/s MP3, they would also notice. In the case of the cables, there's no difference, so people pick the one thay *think* should sound better. Give someone two identical glasses of wine, but tell him that one is a $10 bottle and the other is a $100 bottle. I'm fairly sure these experiments have been done before.

Why are our ears so foolish?

Reply #65 –
Quote from: knutinh on
I find it puzzling that so many people have belief in shamans, religious leaders, Uri Geller and more despite (to mee) the lack of good evidence. I think that the solution must be that during evolution, those that believed in such things could function better in a tribe, and those sceptics would tend to be excluded from social groups, meaning they had to face the sable-tooth tiger all by themselves. Perhaps we are biologically wired (and Darwinistically selected) to believe whatever "authorities" tell us to be true, no matter how unbelievable it seems?

-k


I do as well. And I've concluded that, within limits, we have. After all, our parents, and the elders of the tribe, survived to pass on their lore. So that lore has strong survival value, and departing from it -- deciding to see if cobras are friendlier than we've been told, for example -- can be decidedly hazardous. For this reason, I think we evolved to have a bias towards accepting the teachings of the adults around us. The contrary evolutionary imperative would be the need to change and adapt to new circumstances -- a water hole drying up, say, or a new invention. So we have some capacity to do that, too, but it's a limited one, and doesn't seem to be shared equally by all members of society, in that some seem more disposed to question the established order and accept change than others.

Why are our ears so foolish?

Reply #70 –
Quote from: Josh358 on
Quote from: knutinh on
I find it puzzling that so many people have belief in shamans, religious leaders, Uri Geller and more despite (to mee) the lack of good evidence. I think that the solution must be that during evolution, those that believed in such things could function better in a tribe, and those sceptics would tend to be excluded from social groups, meaning they had to face the sable-tooth tiger all by themselves. Perhaps we are biologically wired (and Darwinistically selected) to believe whatever "authorities" tell us to be true, no matter how unbelievable it seems?

-k


I do as well. And I've concluded that, within limits, we have. After all, our parents, and the elders of the tribe, survived to pass on their lore. So that lore has strong survival value, and departing from it -- deciding to see if cobras are friendlier than we've been told, for example -- can be decidedly hazardous. For this reason, I think we evolved to have a bias towards accepting the teachings of the adults around us. The contrary evolutionary imperative would be the need to change and adapt to new circumstances -- a water hole drying up, say, or a new invention. So we have some capacity to do that, too, but it's a limited one, and doesn't seem to be shared equally by all members of society, in that some seem more disposed to question the established order and accept change than others.


Lets go back in time: And 2 prehumans walk through the jungle. They hear a sound. One of them thinks the sound comes from a scary entity (maybe a predator, or godlike creature) and he turns around. The other things nothing of it walks on and gets eaten by a saber tooth tiger. So the more gullible person survives. 

Why are our ears so foolish?

Reply #71 –
Quote from: Dirk95100 on
Lets go back in time: And 2 prehumans walk through the jungle. They hear a sound. One of them thinks the sound comes from a scary entity (maybe a predator, or godlike creature) and he turns around. The other things nothing of it walks on and gets eaten by a saber tooth tiger. So the more gullible person survives. 

well, the 1st one could be polite enough to warn the 2nd one...
PANIC: CPU 1: Cache Error (unrecoverable - dcache data) Eframe = 0x90000000208cf3b8
NOTICE - cpu 0 didn't dump TLB, may be hung

Why are our ears so foolish?

Reply #72 –
Quote from: Dirk95100 on
Lets go back in time: And 2 prehumans walk through the jungle. They hear a sound. One of them thinks the sound comes from a scary entity (maybe a predator, or godlike creature) and he turns around. The other things nothing of it walks on and gets eaten by a saber tooth tiger. So the more gullible person survives. 


This is another way of saying that the more risk adverse are more likely to survive, at least to a point. If you are too risk adverse you'll never step out of the cave to find food and starve to death.

If humans weren't risk adverse, insurance would never sell for a profit.

In a forum context you can take advantage of human risk adversity by making the golden ear choice seem to be the more risky choice. This won't help with the guy who already spent his money, because for him the risk adverse position is to claim an audible benefit. But the person who is contemplating the new purchase sees thing exactly the opposite. He won't say that he isn't going to buy to avoid conflict, but odds are his money stays in his wallet.

Why are our ears so foolish?

Reply #73 –
The title of this thread is extremely incorrect and presumptive, and the OP is completely inaccurate. Vision and other senses are just as much confounded by hearing and/or each other.

http://mediasite.online.ncsu.edu/online/Vi...e35f4213396db1d  at least for a while, is a talk on auditory perception. If you go to the time of about 28 minutes on for a few minutes, you'll see why. The same slide (208 of 230 for no reason I understand in the header) is true of vision, as well.

If you go to www.aes.org/sections/pnw/ppt.htm and look at "audio vs. video" you will see more on that subject, but sans talk.
-----
J. D. (jj) Johnston

Why are our ears so foolish?

Reply #74 –
Quote from: Woodinville on
The title of this thread is extremely incorrect and presumptive, and the OP is completely inaccurate. Vision and other senses are just as much confounded by hearing and/or each other.

http://mediasite.online.ncsu.edu/online/Vi...e35f4213396db1d  at least for a while, is a talk on auditory perception. If you go to the time of about 28 minutes on for a few minutes, you'll see why. The same slide (208 of 230 for no reason I understand in the header) is true of vision, as well.

If you go to www.aes.org/sections/pnw/ppt.htm and look at "audio vs. video" you will see more on that subject, but sans talk.


JJ, if we could only get the technical quality of the recordings of your talks up to the level of the technical quality of their contents... This is especially frusttrating to me because I the same thing with far better results about once a week, using cheap equipment and in a tougher context.