Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: decibels, noise, canceling | Themes: Audio/Video Players
1. Wha’dya say?
Are noise damage from loud music and radiation damage to brains from computers real? We test radiation and build our own noise-canceling headphones.
I remember being a teen-ager, living large with my AIWA integrated LP player, dual cassette deck, AM/FM, and 10-band EQ stereo. My dad had these monstrous headphones from the ‘70s I’d commandeered in that annoying way kids have of assuming they can own whatever of yours suits them because you’re obviously too old and slow to need it anymore. I used to don these black behemoths of stereophonic destruction and abuse my head with the likes of Def Leppard, Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, and lesser bits of harebrained—I mean, hair band—fluff like Ratt and Autograph. After all, “daytime, nighttime, anytime...things go better with rock,” right? Mom disagreed. She’d constantly remind me that I was doing irreparable damage to my hearing.
Twenty-five years later, I wonder if Mom might have been right. My wife is always complaining that my favorite word is “huh?” So either I have to acknowledge that I’m intentionally ignoring her pleas to take the latest Facebook quiz or else come up with some medical justification for why I’m not hearing her. Surely, I must be a victim of technology. Those damned headphones and endless hours of heavy metal have blasted my inner ears to oblivion. Or perhaps it’s two decades...okay, okay, almost three...of sitting in front of a computer, soaking up all of those evil electromagnetic emissions, until finally my brain has started to bake to a radioactive crisp.
Whatever it is, I’m on a quest for a decent excuse. So join me now for the latest episode of Tom’s Everyday Tech Myths, your one-stop resource for time diversion, scientific excursion, and mostly methodical immersion in the greatest technological questions of our time (or just the last four minutes). This week, we first embark on a quest to see exactly what one must do to wreck one’s hearing with loud music. Then it’s off to explore some DIY noise canceling headphones—a phrase Mom no doubt would have classified as an oxymoron. And if tech hasn’t rotted my ears, then perhaps it really has done a number on my brain. Could a computer really dose you with dangerous radiation? It’s time to find out.
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One word: Google.
Gosh, we're not the general public... we're nerds
correction, physical pain doesn't set in at 130db, feeling sets in at about 130 db, so that bass that you feel thumping is above 130db, but since volume is a function of decibels and frequency it is very quiet. but children wailing is very high pitched so them at 80 db is significantly louder than the bass in your car. if you want to learn more than just do some more googling around. try searching "volume"
A clarification on ANC theory. There is no "anti-noise" generated. Ambient sounds strike the speaker cone moving it. Essentially the ANC signal applied to the diaphragm resists this motion of the cone, holding it still. Without movement the sound energy is dissipated as heat on the back surface of the cone. It is not canceled out in the classic sense, the compression and rarefaction of sound waves are mechanically destroyed.
One more really simple thing to add here. Put some really high-quality foam earplugs in your ear canal AND use your ANC headphones. This is what I do when I fly (Bose QC2's and custom-fit plugs). You've got to have enough sound without distortion in your headphones to overcome the attenuation of the plugs but for the most part their response curve is flat (if not a bit high on the low end). So your tinny-sounding earphones are actually going to have a bit more bass overall.
I've also been known to wear my Shure earbuds under my QC2's but they stick out far enough that I have to be careful not to touch them against the inside of the headphones. The nice bit is that even sitting in the back of an MD-80 I've only got to put my iPod at about 25% volume to hear every detail.
Shures with QC2 sounds like Heaven...assuming Heaven is a very quiet place. :-)
Regarding joeman42's comment, first, I'm going to say that I am definitely not a sound engineer nor any kind of other acoustic specialist, so the depth of my understanding may need improvement. However, the description I gave of ANC fits every description of the technology I've been exposed to over the years. For example, check this paper: http://doctord.dyndns.org:8000/Pubs/POTENT.htm, which describes the ANC process like so: "the noise is modeled to produce an anti-noise waveform at the output speaker." Given this guy's title as Vice President of R&D for Noise Cancellation Technologies, Inc. and the fact that this paper appeared in an IEEE publication, I'm pretty confident of the source.
Another very entertaining article from you.
“(Once again, you can tell something about the quality of a site’s content by the frequency of typos and errors in its text.)”
You might want to change that line before someone of bestofmedia knocks on your door and gives you a kick in the nuts when you open.
Another very entertaining article from you.“(Once again, you can tell something about the quality of a site’s content by the frequency of typos and errors in its text.)”You might want to change that line before someone of bestofmedia knocks on your door and gives you a kick in the nuts when you open.
Yeah, I can add that to the list of reasons I've given them. ;-) But really, you can tell the difference between a rushed schedule and borderline illiteracy or outright disregard for quality. If I've got to take one in the giggleberries for saying that Web sites in general need better quality control, so be it, but I think Bestof has a good crew that does good work. I'd rather have a few typos and solid reporting from people who care about the readers' best interests than a lot of the over-polished, under-thought dreck common in the field.
Thanks for the kind words.
Interesting article
I have hearing loss. I was born since birth, and therefore, I can't use headphones or go to rock concerts, lest I risk damage to my ears. I have never used an i Pod for more than a few minutes, and I'm glad.
I'm 15 years old, and I estimate that by the time I'm 40, my generation will have worse hearing than me. I'll be laughing "I HAD hearing loss BEFORE it was POPULAR!"
I should hope so.