4. Protect Yourself

Pete Townsend, legendary guitarist of The Who, has publicly stated that he is practically deaf and is now vocal about cautioning people in their music listening habits. But he doesn’t blame his decades of high-volume rock concerts. The real culprit, he believes, are headphones. “My own particular kind of damage was caused by using earphones in the recording studio, not playing loud on stage,” he wrote late in 2005.

This makes sense if you think about it. Barring the handful of idiots who persist in standing right next to 12-foot tall speaker towers at outdoor concerts, banging their heads in time to the pulsing destruction between their ears, even the people on stage are still many feet from their speakers. With headphones, though, your ears are being bombarded at point blank range. Worse than that, air tends to filter high frequencies. With headphones, you’ve got the transducers only inches from the ear drums. There’s no chance for signal attenuation. The trend from headphones to earbuds or, even worse, in-canal earphones only exacerbates the problem. We love the detail and clarity of such devices, but it’s all too easy to abuse them. With over 200 million iPods sold, we are now living in a world where the capacity for hearing damage rests in practically every pocket—especially teens.

In a recent Boston Globe article titled “iHuh?” writer Patricia Wen notes: “Researchers say the sensory cells in our inner ear—which transmit sounds to our brains—can only take so much auditory bombardment before they begin to wilt, irreparably, and die. The damage teens suffer now may not show up until they're in their forties and asking friends in crowded restaurants, ‘Could you repeat that?’”

Joking aside, I’ve never actually thought I have hearing loss, but I do have a very hard time understanding people near me in even moderately loud settings. If I’m trying to hear my wife at a table when the kids are talking, I’m more or less lip reading.

Maximum iPod volume is about 105 decibels. However, there is a way to hack an iPod and unlock this limit. (No, I’m not going to tell you how. I’m supposed to be helping you here.) I would actually encourage you to lower the iPod’s limit. As of iTunes 6.0.5, you can manually set the maximum volume limit by going into Settings > Volume Limit, then setting the point you want as the maximum level (we recommend 75% to 80%). You can use the Set Combination function to create a password for resetting the maximum volume, or select Done. Now, when you crank the volume up to maximum, it won’t really be the maximum, and you’ll see a little lock symbol indicating that a reduced limit is in place.

Amazingly little formal study has been done on hearing loss from recreational devices. One such study dates back to 1996 (Airo, Erkko, et. al.; “Listening to Music with Earphones: An Assessment of Noise Exposure.”) in which the authors found that while most of the 45 sampled subjects were not at risk, 15% of them exceeded 85 dB listening levels in the field. “The music level was on average set to exceed 85 dB when the background noise level was 72 dB. Some hearing loss risk would be expected when [music players] are used in noisy conditions at work or among traffic.”

The moral of the story? Turn it down. Many people can’t tell the difference with headphones between 70 or 75 dB and 85 dB. You can crank it, but crank slowly and stop when the sound level is comfortable, not “intense!” Remember that the longer you listen at excessive levels, the louder you’ll have to keep cranking it in order to overcome subtle, progressive damage. Real damage may take years to detect, and by then it’ll be too late. Point for Mom.