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Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

When earbuds came on the market, Audiologists said "this is going to be a disaster in 20 years time" and guess what: tinnitus and high frequency hearing loss levels are through the roof.

I think its to one side of your concern, but related: we truly don't socialize the needed guarding of our eardrums. It's a vicious cycle: unexpected mechanical noises stop us sleeping, leads to weight gain, diabetes, heart problems, high BP which in turn feeds tinnitus, hearing loss...

I wake early for other reasons. Sunrise birdsong is lovely. But dump-truck and recycling truck noises are pretty clashy.

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    */5 * * * * osascript -e 'set volume output volume (output volume of (get volume settings))-1'

Speaking of tinnitus, and since this is Hacker News: I've entered the above in crontab (crontab -e) on my mac. It lowers the volume a small amount every 5 minutes. I have to press the volume up button once every 30 minutes to keep a roughly equal volume level.

This prevents me from accidentally listening to something that is too loud for too long. At the level I usually listen to music, it takes about 2 hours to fade to nothing; it's a linear fade, so after 30 minutes the volume is at 75% my preferred starting volume. If I get lost in my work, the music gradually fades and I avoid realizing many hours later that I've been blasting my ears the whole time.

I wish all devices had a mode like this. I haven't investigated how to do this on Linux, but it should be possible there as well I think.

Thanks for this. Really great idea! I normally don't set my headphones that loud but it's happened that I raised the volume during a meeting because someone was talking too quietly and forgot to lower it.

Another nice bonus is that if you're listening to a song at room filling volume during the day, and then later at night you want to quietly watch a video, by then the volume will have decayed to zero so you wont be surprised with a really loud video.

seems like it'd be better served to have some sort of limit on how loud the volume on a device can be set. maybe in the system preferences set MAX = 75%, but in Finder allow the volume to be set at 100% in the UI but the system keeping it limited. make this a per Output setting so when you switch back to Built-in or other external device it is not limited to anything but your buds.

The issue is while your system volume can be the same, media volume varies immensely. Listening to one album, it could be all relatively low and gentle. The next one could be noise that blasts your ears but you don't really think about it due to focusing on something else.

Sometimes I'll try adjusting my volume down to half and notice everything still sounds fine. It's a sign that I was listening to something way too loud without even realizing it.

Thought this was interesting so had a quick search and here is what I found

For linux there are a few solutions depending on the install:

    */5 * * * * pactl set-sink-volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ -2%

or with amixer

    */5 * * * * amixer -D pulse sset Master 2%-

Terminal command to set audio volume? - https://askubuntu.com/a/97945

For windows you can use powershell to trigger the Volume Down Button

    $obj = new-object -com wscript.shell
    $obj.SendKeys([char]174)

Simply add the script to a Task scheduler task (create as a daily task then go into advanced and trigger every x minutes)

Change audio level from powershell - https://stackoverflow.com/a/21362870 Run a task every x-minutes - https://stackoverflow.com/a/4250516

Super true. Go to any modern concert, or even most movie theaters, and much of the experience will be well over 80, and even 90db. This is frankly unacceptable. Even the supposedly good standards for audio engineering (Dolby atoms and IMAX) — which specifically make sure theaters are following the spec — are over 90db. A wedding DJ had the music at over 90db in a small venue recently. The last concert I went to, which had good audio engineers, was over 90db for nearly the whole thing.

My theory is that audio engineers are mixing live venues after already having hearing loss, thus normalizing hearing damage for everyone else as well.

I strongly believe regulation is needed to combat these problems. Firstly, a venue should not be allowed to damage one’s hearing with loud speakers. I think it’d be reasonable to require nearly all of any auditory experience to be under 80db.

Secondly, city noise pollution is a huge health problem as well. Most of it comes from car tire noise or strangely loud engines (like Harleys), so preventing that should be a priority. Walk along the waterfront in any city, and the overwhelming audio source is the white noise of car tires on the uncovered freeways. It’s hard to imagine how wonderful these places could be if those sounds were much more muted.

I have no problem if you want to have fun with a loud thing, but do it out in the middle of nowhere! Like any kind of pollution, we have a right to live without others negatively affecting us. I think law has not really caught up in these areas of human rights.

OSHA requires mitigation above 85 db, and yet there aren't anything mentioning it on venues.

https://www.osha.gov/noise

It's understandable that a movie or song might WANT to get loud at a particular time, but squashing everything to max is not the way to go.

It's absolutely wild how loud modern sound systems get, even relatively small ones. I even bring earplugs to weddings at this point because the band is so incredibly loud (out of the amplified speakers).

> When earbuds came on the market

I switched to active noise cancelling headphones and earbuds several years ago (2015-ish) primarily because they enable me to keep volume at like 20% and still get the benefits of sound isolation. It's been a huge revolution for me personally.

Running for 2 hours used to give me an ear-ache. Now it's perfect. The improvement in comfort from music-at-the-office is even bigger. 8 hours was a lot and sound isolation is really important to me. I can't focus if I can hear other humans and eating noises make me wanna punch people.

I hope you aren't running with ear plugs and noise cancelling headphones or have some dedicated safe place to run.

I’ve tested and thanks to the low volume I can hear more than I did with normal earbuds. Noise cancelling is great at blocking out constant sounds like wind and background traffic, but it doesn’t do much for acute noises like horns, nearby cars, bicycle bells, or people talking/shouting.

With regular earbuds they were cranked up to 80% to block out the wind so I couldn’t hear any of the acute sounds I can hear with noise canceling and volume at 20%.

Funfact: I ride my motorcycle with actual earplugs. The wind noise at 80mph causes permanent damage after 15min. You hear more of the important stuff with earplugs because they block the wind.

What headphones are you using? I’m training for a marathon and it’d probably be wise for me to turn down the volume a bit but running with my bose closed backs sounds miserable

AirPods Pro have worked best of everything I’ve tried

Keep it to a reasonable volume, keep your head on a swivel, wear your PT belt and you’ll be fine. Deaf and hard of hearing folks aren’t getting mowed down in droves.

Yep, I joined the tinnitus bandwagon in the beginning of the pandemic. I was locked up at home and neighbouring dogs wouldn't shut up all day, so I resorted to earplugs and here I am now. Surprisingly I met at least 5 other people with the same problem recently, and they were all told by doctors that it was due to stress and not earplugs/headphones. I call it BS.

Earplugs gave you tinnitus? Do you mean earbuds? Earplugs are typically hearing PPE.

I've done pretty much everything I could imagine to try to identify the root cause, no doctor could give a reasonable diagnosis. My tinnitus started after a night with earplugs, but it could have been a coincidence since I also used noise-cancelled Sony headphones. Who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Not to be rude but you ascribing an equal likelihood of causing tinnitus to one night of using earplugs(which BLOCK sound from your ears) vs presumably regular/sustained use of noise cancelling headphones(which BLAST sound into your ears) borders on ridiculousness and make me think you're just trolling..

Earplugs go into the ear similar to earbuds, but are squishy and meant to be rolled thin so you can get them in a bit further (then they decompress halfway inside your ear and fill in the gaps). If you push them in too far I imagine they can damage the eardrum, which could cause tinnitus.

After trying earplugs myself a few months ago, I decided it was too risky to sleep with them due to the pressure I felt in my ear (the one against the pillow) when I lay on my side.

You would have to push your ear plugs in so far that you couldn't take them out to get anywhere near the eardrum though.

My tinnitus started after a night out with earplugs. Basically the earplugs pushed wax buildup deep into my eardrum. It took quite a while to remove that wax, and while that improved things a lot, the tinnitus stayed after that.

Noise cancelling headphones definitively promote tinnitus

Interesting, I've seen the claim of NC induced tinnitus a few other times. In terms of noise induced hearing loss it the canceling should not be an issue (since in the worst case of a complete misprediction you get only a doubling in intensity which), but since no canceling is perfect maybe the residual ends up adversely affecting the auditory pathways at a neurological level somehow.

Maybe you first noticed it while using earplugs (since they’d block out basically everything else) and now it’s become difficult to ignore? I had something similar happen with noticing floaters in my eyes constantly over the pandemic

Anecdata, but another case here. I wear them approx. 6 months per year because of knocking heating sounds. Anyway, doctor recommended to do ear cleansing once a year and it helped, maybe 80% of the ringing sound is gone. Earplugs caused all the grease to end up compressed and deep in the ear canal. After a while it blocked signal transmission through the auditory nerve enough so that my brain thinks there's no audio input and it starts compensating with these imaginary ringing sounds.

Earplugs can give you tinnitus because they provide almost complete silence, in which your brain can latch on to the tinniest pre-existing tinnitus sound that was already there (which is pretty common in the current era of hearing-damaging equipment and environments), but you didn't notice it before. Once the brain notices it, it's basically impossible to unhear it. That's my theory at least.

I got pretty bad tinnitus due to stress induced bruxism. Identifying the source of the stress that caused it was difficult, but it turned out it was video games! So I stopped playing them so much, and the tinnitus went away

Of all of the years as a DJ using headphones in loud settings, all of the concerts, all of the events with loud amplified sound systems, etc, I was able to avoid tinnitus. It wasn't until I was driving and was t-boned in my side of the car with a side impact airbag going off. I walked away from the car with nothing more than a few scratches from flying glass, this lovely ringing in the ear, and this lousy t-shirt.

As a concert attender I probably recall the event that was the most likely cause which gave me tinnitus. It was an EDM concert where the front speakers sounded very 'rough' and also the stupid decision on my (& my friends) part to stay as close in the front as possible, for more than 1 hour. I think close impacts from airwaves (crashes, staying close to speakers, etc) are the most popular cause, as listening 'responsibly' on headphones did not gave me tinnitus before, nor did my usual edm concert attendance (excepting obviously the following couple of days). The eardrum can recover but once it's been 'cracked' remedies are very rare (if they exist at all, haven't researched).

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